‘Laughing Cavalier’ takes centre stage

Four centuries after he was created with a roguish grin, upturned moustache and stylish outfit, Dutch master painter Frans Hals’ most celebrated portrait returns to the Netherlands in a new exhibition.

Borrowed from Britain’s Wallace Collection, Hals’ 1624 masterpiece The Laughing Cavalier, pictured, will go on display tomorrow with more than 50 other paintings in a never-before seen collection at the Rijksmuseum.

“We felt that Frans Hals is one of the greatest painters of the 17th century after Rembrandt and Vermeer and we should now give him centre stage,” Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits said.

But whereas Rembrandt painted the human condition and Vermeer was known for his intimate portraits, Hals “is all about movement”, Dibbits said.

The Laughing Cavalier – the portrait of a 26-year-old believed to be a wealthy civilian – makes an appearance for the first time in more than 150 years on Dutch soil, Amsterdam’s famous museum said.

Taking a main place in the exhibit, the mischievous gentleman sports some of Hals’ technical hallmarks: broad quick brushstrokes capturing him in a fleeting moment, but also a keen eye for detail such as the embroidery on his left sleeve.

Several other rare Hals masterpieces will also be on display including one on loan for the first time ever from the Frans Hals Museum in nearby Haarlem, where the artist lived and worked. Painted in 1616, The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard has never previously been loaned out, while the 1630 painting Fisher Boy comes from a private collection and the 1625 Laughing Boy from the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague.

The vast majority of Hals’ 220 paintings were portraits – and not just of rich merchants or married couples. Hals’ son Pieter had a mental disability and it must have had a huge impact on the painter, Dibbits said.

One painting, the 1640 Malle Babbe depicts a laughing older woman holding a beer pewter with an owl on her shoulder – a sign that she was mentally impaired. Another, the Rommel-Pot Player painted in 1620, shows a man believed to have a mental disability playing a home-made instrument surrounded by laughing children.

But many of Hals’ paintings have people laughing, captured in a moment like a photograph.

Seen as the front-runner to inspire the late 19th century Impressionists, Hals was known for his sweeping strokes and vigorous dabs of paint. “Hals is an explosion of movement,” said Dibbits. “The paintbrush dances over the canvas.” –

Hals is an explosion of movement