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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.