Discover Rijksmuseum's Frans Hals Collection

Painted in bright, blond tonality, The Merry Drinker by Frans Hals is one of the Rijksmuseum's most popular pieces. An impressionistic painting, The Merry Drinker has been difficult to classify as a genre piece or as a portrait and has been a topic of conversation in art history.

Commissioned for the marriage of Issac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen in 1622, the 'picnic-style' pose was somewhat unusual for this time. His loose painting style introduced a livelier touch to Dutch art.

An exuberant painting of a young man in flamboyant costume, The Laughing Cavalier is the most famous painting by Frans Hals. Even with a limited color palette, the painting is known for its unique vitality.

An early commissioned painting, Catharina Hooft with her Nurse follows old, accepted conventions of this genre of painting. However, this double portrait is also one of Hals' inventions to subvert the convention.

Housed in Berlin, the Malle Babbe (also known as 'The Witch of Haarlem') is famous for its mythic witch figure. Admired by artists, this painting has seen several copies and variants made by other artists.

Considered one of the most famous paintings at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, *The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard* is based mostly on the painting of Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, who painted the same militia company in 1599.

Permanently housed in Madrid, the Family Group in a Landscape is one of the few paintings made by Hals in an open-air 'picnic-style'. It is also the Hals' largest painting and the only one of his paintings featuring a black boy.