Laughing Boy with Flute Laughing Boy with Flute Laughing Boy with a Flute is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in the early 1620s. This painting was documented by Hofstede de Groot in 1910, who wrote "31. A LAUGHING BOY WITH A FLUTE. M. 240. Half-length, in profile to the left. The head is three-quarters left. The long hair falls in disorder. The lips are parted, showing the teeth. On the left the flute is held upright in the right hand. The eyes look to the left and slightly upward. Lifelike colour in the face. Circular panel, n| inches
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