Fisher Boy with Basket

In the early 1630s Frans Hals was the portrait painter of Haarlem, the Dutch city where he spent almost his whole life catching burghers and their wives mid-expression. Alongside those commissions he and his workshop produced pictures like this one, cheerful half-lengths of fisher children from the nearby coast, laughing straight out at you with a fish held up and a big wicker basket at the elbow. There was a real market for them. The young Dutch Republic had money and wall space, and a grinning boy was easier to live with than a saint. Hals catches the laugh with those quick, visible strokes he was famous for, the paint left rough and open. This particular boy was probably carried out mostly by a workshop hand, with Hals setting the design and the head, the everyday economics of a busy studio.