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The Laughing Cavalier
Frans Hals · Baroque & Dutch Golden Age
- Artist
- Frans Hals (c. 1582–1666)
- Date
- 1624
- Dimensions
- 83 x 67.3 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom
Frans Hals’s portrait of an unknown man of twenty-six, painted in Haarlem in 1624, is known as The Laughing Cavalier, although the sitter is neither laughing nor a cavalier. His self-assured half-smile, upturned moustache and confident pose made it one of the most famous portraits of the Dutch Golden Age.
A closer look
The man stands with one hand on his hip, filling the frame and looking down at us with ironic amusement. Hals’s brushwork is astonishingly varied: the face is smoothly modelled, while the lace collar and the embroidered sleeve, covered with bees, arrows, flames and lovers’ knots, are painted with quick, sparkling touches. These motifs are emblems of love, suggesting the portrait may have been made for a betrothal.
History of the painting
The Laughing Cavalier was not famous until the 19th century. In 1865, at the sale of the Pourtalès collection in Paris, the Marquess of Hertford bought it after a bidding war with Baron James de Rothschild, paying 51,000 francs, which made headlines across Europe. The painting then came to London, and through the bequest of Lady Wallace in 1897 it became one of the stars of the Wallace Collection. Its popular title dates only from 1888; the sitter is not laughing but smiling.
