Dois meninos cantando com um alaúde e um livro de música

Frans Hals painted this around 1625, and what he was after was a passing instant rather than a pose. One boy holds a lute and taps out the beat with his hand, his mouth open in the middle of a note, while a second head leans in behind him and sings from the same open book. Pictures of young musicians like this were often meant to stand for one of the five senses, in this case Hearing, and they hung in Dutch homes as cheerful everyday scenes. Hals worked with fast, visible strokes that look almost careless up close and pull together into living faces at a distance. He was one of the Dutch painters who built a whole reputation on exactly that loose, quick way with paint.