The Laughing Cavalier (1624) is a portrait by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals in the Wallace Collection in London. It was described by art historian Seymour Slive as "one of the most brilliant of all Baroque portraits". The title is an invention of the Victorian public and press, dating from its exhibition in the opening display at the Bethnal Green Museum in 1872–1875, just after its arrival in England, after which it was regularly reproduced as a print, and became one of the best known old master paintings in Britain. The unknown subject is in fact not laughing, but can be said to have an enigmatic smile, much amplified by his upturned moustache.
Laughing Cavalier
Frans Hals the Elder was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of tronies, who lived and worked in Haarlem.
Copy of a Self-portrait by Hals
Frans Hals
Statue of Frans Hals in Florapark, Haarlem
Frans Hals, later finished by Pieter Codde. De Magere Compagnie. 1637. Oil on canvas, 209 x 429 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam