For other uses, see The Laughing Cavalier (disambiguation)

The Laughing Cavalier (disambiguation)

The Laughing Cavalier is a 1624 painting by Frans Hals in The Wallace Collection, London.It may also refer to:* The Laughing Cavalier a prequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel series of novels by Baroness Orczy, about the supposed subject of the painting....

The Laughing Cavalier (1624) is a famous portrait by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals

Frans Hals

Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...

 in the Wallace Collection

Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, which has been described as "one of the most brilliant of all Baroque portraits". The title is an invention of the Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 public and press, dating from its exhibition in the opening display at the Bethnal Green Museum in 1872-75, just after its arrival in England, where it became famous, much reproduced in prints, and for long one of the best known old master paintings, at least in Britain. The unknown subject is in fact not laughing, but can be said to have an enigmatic smile, much amplified by his upturned moustaches. Whether his eyes do indeed follow the viewer round the room, as popular legend insists, is a matter of personal judgement.

Description

The portrait measures 83 × 67.3 cm (32.7 × 26.5 in) and is is inscribed at top right "Æ'TA SVÆ 26/A°1624", which expands to "aetatis suae 26, anno 1624" in Latin and means that the portrait was painted when the sitter was 26 and in the year 1624. The identity of the man is unknown, and though the recorded 19th century titles in Dutch, English and French mostly suggest a military man, or at least an officer in one of the part-time militia

Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...

 companies that were often the subjects of group portraits, including some by Hals and most famously Rembrandt's Night Watch

Night Watch

A Night Watch is a lookout, guard or patrol at night, in a nautical, military or police context; see Watchman .Night Watch or Nightwatch as a proper name may refer to:-Art:...

, in fact he is as likely to be a wealthy civilian. The composition is lively and spontaneous, and despite the apparent labour involved in the gorgeous, and very expensive, silk costume, close inspection reveals long, quick brush strokes. The turning pose and low viewpoint are found in other portraits by Hals and here allow emphasis on the embroidered sleeve and lace cuff. There are many emblem

Emblem

An emblem is a pictorial image, abstract or representational, that epitomizes a concept — e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory — or that represents a person, such as a king or saint.-Distinction: emblem and symbol:...

s in the embroidery: signifying "the pleasures and pains of love" are "bees, arrows, flaming cornucopia

Cornucopia

The cornucopia or horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers, nuts, other edibles, or wealth in some form...

e, lover's knots and tongues of fire", while an obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

 or pyramid

Pyramid

A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a single point. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces...

 signifies strength and Mercury

Mercury (mythology)

Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...

's cap and caduceus

Caduceus

The caduceus is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings...

 fortune.

Though in general commissioned portraits, which this work certainly is, rarely showed adults smiling until the late 18th century, though this often seen in tronie

Tronie

A tronie is a common type, or group of types, of works of Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that shows an exaggerated facial expression or a stock character in costume...

s and figures in genre painting

Genre painting

Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...

. But Hals is an exception to the general rule and often showed sitters with broader smiles than here, and in informal poses that bring an impression of movement and spontaneity to his work.

History

The painting's provenance

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

 only goes back to a sale in The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

 in 1770; after further Dutch sales it was bought by the French collector, the Comte de Portalès-Gorgier in 1822. After his death the painting was acquired at the auction of his collection in Paris in 1865 by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford

Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford

Captain Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford KG was the son of Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford....

, who outbid Baron James de Rothschild

James Mayer de Rothschild

James Mayer de Rothschild was a French banker and the original founder of the French branch of the Rothschild family.-Biography:...

 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

Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...

, which was deliberately sited away from the West End of London

West End of London

The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...

 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 considerable part in raising the critical estimation of Hals in England. By 1888, when it was again exhibited at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

, it had become Laughing Cavalier, though a cleaning in the intervening period (in 1884) may have changed the effect. The critic in the Athenaeum

Athenaeum (magazine)

The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....

 noted a brighter appearance, but also that "The man smiles rather than laughs".

Derivatives

The Laughing Cavalier is used by McEwans

McEwan's Brewery

McEwan's is a brand of ales, with the draught beers brewed at the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh, Scotland and the canned and bottled beers brewed at the Eagle Brewery, Bedford, England. It is now owned by Wells & Youngs following the sale of the brands by Heineken in 2011...

 beer as its logo. It has been modified showing the Laughing Cavalier enjoying the beer
In the Scarlet Pimpernel

Scarlet pimpernel

Scarlet pimpernel is a low-growing annual plant found in Europe, Asia and North America...

 adventure series by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Laughing Cavalier (novel)

The Laughing Cavalier (novel)

Set in Holland in 1623/1624, The Laughing Cavalier, by Baroness Orczy, revolves around Percy Blake, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel who goes by the name Diogenes....

is a prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 recounting the story of the supposed subject of the painting, who is an ancestor of her main hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney.

The "eyes following you round the room" trope has long been a stand-by in British comedy, used by Pete and Dud

Pete and Dud

Pete and Dud were characters played by the comedians and entertainers Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.The dialogue format originated in 1964 when Dudley Moore invited Peter Cook to appear in a television performance, whereupon Peter Cook scripted a conversation between two men from Dagenham in flat caps...

in The Art Gallery, among many others, sometimes in the form of a portrait with cut-away eyes that can be used as a peephole.

External links

• The Laughing Cavalier on the official Wallace collection website