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Frans Hals , Dutch, c.1581-1666

Title

A Fisherboy

Datec.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.