The catchy title made the artwork all the more memorable, and The Laughing Cavalier became a motif for wealth and self-assured masculinity that endured well into the 20th Century when the figure was lauded as "the greatest ladies' man" by The Radio Times (1970) and used to sell alcohol and cigars.Ī proud symbol of patriarchy, this jovial figure is perhaps less lovable when viewed through a feminist lens. By 1888, the smiling artwork, formerly known simply as "portrait of a man" and believed to be of a 26-year-old unmarried merchant, became known as The Laughing Cavalier − inspired, most likely, by the sitter's sword and swaggering stance. Soon, says Marrigje Rikken, head of collections and exhibitions at the Netherlands' Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, "every museum in Europe wanted to have Frans Hals paintings". The Laughing Cavalier's popularity is widely attributed to the praise lavished on it in 1868 by renowned critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger, but a dramatic bidding war for The Laughing Cavalier two years earlier saw it fetch more than six times the estimate, placing it the hands of the 4th Marquess of Hertford, one of the founders of the Wallace Collection, where it has resided ever since. However, this fervour for Frans Hals, who died in relative poverty, has been mostly posthumous. Hals's Family Group in a Landscape (1645-1648) is a case in point and was revised by American artist Titus Kaphar in his 2017 work Shifting the Gaze, which painted out the white people to allow the lone black servant boy, hidden in the shadows, to predominate. "In many paintings, there'd always be a diminutive black person", explains Joseph. It was also a way to boost black visibility in art. The guitarist had made a huge impression on him ("I'd never seen a young black man who appeared to be in charge") and it made sense to depict him as this confident cavalier character with his proud hand-on-hip pose. When Joseph saw the flamboyant gold-threaded outfit and the wide-brimmed black hat, he thought: "this is how Hendrix dresses". It's a painting that means different things to different people. The iconography on his doublet, for example, which features symbols of "fortune, strength, virtue and love", is extremely unusual for Dutch portraits at that time and might point to his personal ideals as well as his high education. "No matter where you stand, he keeps looking at you and it's incredibly captivating." Also notable, she says, is the complexity of the work. To his contemporaries, the lifelike portrait "seemed to live and breathe", agrees Packer. "You can actually relate to these people… That is something that he does better than anyone else." "The beauty of Frans Hals is that he characterises people so incredibly well," he adds. "Frans Hals enters a scene that is established and yet he completely changes it through the kind of portraits that he makes," says Bart Cornelis, curator of The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals, in a short film for the National Gallery. Hals's charismatic Laughing Cavalier, one of art history's most treasured paintings, has been released from the Wallace Collection for the first time since 1888 to take part in The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals, which recently opened at London's National Gallery and is the first major monographic show dedicated to Frans Hals in more than 30 years. The tragedy of art's greatest supermodel Featuring on the front cover of the recently published survey of his work I Know What I See, the painting brings together two of his favourite things: Jimi Hendrix, who he saw at the Saville Theatre in 1967, and Frans Hals's The Laughing Cavalier (1624), which he describes as "one of the greatest portraits of all time". The encounter with this life-size portrait would inspire Laughing Legend with Stratocaster (2012-2019), one of Joseph's best-loved works. "It was absolutely amazing," he tells BBC Culture. "When I walked in and saw it, I was stunned," says Dominica-born British artist Tam Joseph on his first encounter with The Laughing Cavalier (1624) by Dutch painter Frans Hals (1582-1666) at the Wallace Collection in London.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |