The Rommelpot player

Frans Hals painted The Rommelpot Player around 1618, a genre scene depicting a street musician playing a rommelpot — a friction drum made from a pig's bladder stretched over a pot — surrounded by children delighting in the noise. The subject descended from the tradition of Flemish popular genre scenes depicting street entertainment, and Hals's treatment — animated, closely observed, filled with the visual pleasure of specific faces in specific expressions of amusement — shows his early mastery of the expressive figure group. The rommelpot was associated with the Twelfth Night and New Year celebrations when musicians traditionally went door-to-door, giving the scene seasonal as well as social specificity.

The animated crowd of children surrounding the performer is painted with broad, energetic strokes, their laughing faces rendered with the spontaneous liveliness that would become Hals's hallmark.