Peeckelhaering (The merry reveler)

Frans Hals's Peeckelhaering (The Merry Reveler) of around 1628 depicts a figure of comic theater — the Peeckelhaering was a stock buffoon character in Dutch popular entertainment, a braggart soldier of comedy — with the exuberant brushwork and direct comic energy that made Hals the supreme painter of jovial popular life. The laughing face, the broad hat, and the tankard create a study in uninhibited pleasure that contrasts with the contained dignity of his formal portraits. Such genre figures allowed Hals to explore the extreme registers of facial expression.

The laughing face pushes Hals's ability to capture fleeting expression to its limits, the open mouth and crinkled eyes demanding rapid, decisive brushwork to freeze a moment of transient hilarity. The bravura handling — paint applied with almost violent energy — matches the subject's exuberance.