The Wallace Collection

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The Laughing Cavalier
  • Frans Hals (1582/3 - 1666)
  • The Laughing Cavalier
  • Netherlands
  • 1624
  • Painting
  • Oil on canvas
  • Image size: 83 x 67.3 cm
    Object size: 112.5 x 98 x 9 cm
  • Inscription: 'AETA SUAE 26 / A° 1624'
  • P84
  • Large Drawing Room
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  • The title The Laughing Cavalier was coined between 1875 and 1888, yet, as has often been pointed out, the sitter is neither laughing nor a cavalier. He wears a rich jacket embroidered with motifs common in emblem books of the time and symbolic of the pains and pleasures of love, including arrows, flaming cornucopiae and lovers’ knots, which may suggest that the picture is a betrothal portrait. One of the most brilliant of all Baroque portraits, the picture’s low viewpoint and swaggering pose contribute to its sense of monumentality. At close hand the painting also astounds with its bravura technique. The vivid colours, differing textures and details of the costume are brilliantly captured by Hals’s fluid, expressive brushwork.