Frans Hals
, Dutch, c.1581-1666
Title
A FisherboyDatec.1630
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
74.1 x 60 cm
Signedlower left: F H [in monogram]
Credit LinePurchased, 1881
Object numberNGI.193
Exhibition HistoryDutch Painting, Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, London, 1952-1953
Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964
Label TextHals was one of the key portrait painters of seventeenth-century Holland. His likenesses of both individuals and groups are characterised by an unprecedented liveliness and distinct loose brushwork. Hals’s style did not appeal to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critics, who saw it as lazy and unfinished. With the rise of Realism and, later, Impressionism, Hals was seen as a modern painter before his time. This genre scene belongs to a small group of loosely painted fisher boys and girls painted by Hals around 1630.