Jeune homme et femme dans une auberge

Hals dated almost nothing, but he signed and dated this one in 1623, and it is the fixed point historians use to place his early genre scenes. A young man throws back a raised glass, a woman laughs against his shoulder, a dog looks up between them. To Haarlem eyes in the 1620s this was not just a good time. The raised drink, the loose company, the tavern glimpsed behind the curtain read as the prodigal son squandering his money, a familiar moral dressed up as fun. The man has sometimes been called Pieter Ramp, though nobody is certain. What is certain is the handling: quick, wet, confident strokes that catch a laugh mid-motion, made while Hals was still building his name in the young Dutch Republic.