Boy with Flute

In the early 1620s a group of Dutch painters came home from Rome to Utrecht carrying Caravaggio's manner with them, half-length figures in theatrical costume, lit as if by a single low lamp, often musicians caught mid-song. Frans Hals, over in Haarlem, took up the idea in pictures like this one from around 1623. It is not a portrait of a particular child but a tronie, a study of a type and an expression. The boy tilts his head as though listening to his own flute, his lips parted in a song we cannot hear. Hals laid the paint on in quick, open strokes and left every touch showing, the loose, rapid handling that made his name.