客栈中的青年男女

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.