Laughing Boy with a Flute Laughing Boy with a Flute Laughing boy with a flute is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1626 and now in the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Schwerin. The painting shows a boy with a flute with his head at an angle facing the viewer. In his 1910 catalog of Frans Hals works Hofstede de Groot wrote: "32. A LAUGHING BOY WITH A FLUTE. B. 118 ; M. 230. Half-length ; life size, almost in full face. The line of the shoulders rises to the left. The head is also almost in full face, but slightly
Laughing Cavalier Marquess of Hertford, who outbid Baron James de Rothschild at more than six times the sales estimate. It was in Hertford's Paris home in 1871, listed as "portrait d'un homme" ("portrait of a man"), and then brought to London, probably for the purpose of exhibiting it in a large and long loan exhibition of old master paintings at Bethnal Green, which was deliberately sited away from the West End of London to attract the working classes. The exhibition was a huge success and "A Cavalier" (the catalogue title) a particular hit with both public and the critics; it played a