Hals Paints the Laughing Cavalier

1625

The Haarlem portraitist Frans Hals, working with rapid slashing brushstrokes that looked like mistakes until you stepped back, produced his most famous likeness: a twenty-six-year-old officer with a curled mustache and a smirk rather than a laugh. Dutch Golden Age portraiture had found its swagger, and Hals had demonstrated that paint applied with bravado could capture personality more vividly than any careful glaze.