Le Joueur de rommelpot

The instrument at the centre of this is a rommelpot, a folk noise-maker made by stretching a pig's bladder over a pot and rubbing a stick through it to draw out a low growl. Children ran through Dutch towns with it at carnival and around Twelfth Night, begging for coins. Hals painted the scene about 1618 in Haarlem and caught something new for its time, the real, unforced laughter of children crowding in to listen. It became one of his most copied inventions. At least 15 versions were recorded by 1910, most of them workshop replicas and later imitations. The Kimbell's canvas, reworked in many places as Hals changed his mind, is the one the others were traced from.