Man with a beer jug

Frans Hals's "Man with a Beer Jug" (c. 1630) is one of his lively genre portraits depicting everyday tavern life in Haarlem. These informal character studies captured the convivial atmosphere of Dutch social life with an immediacy and spontaneity that set Hals apart from all contemporaries. Hals's revolutionary loose brushwork, capturing the immediacy of fleeting expression with a boldness that seemed impossibly spontaneous to his contemporaries, was rediscovered by the Realists and Impressionists in the nineteenth century as an anticipation of their own aims.

The man's ruddy complexion and gleaming jug are painted with Hals's signature rapid brushwork, each stroke placed with seeming spontaneity yet creating a remarkably convincing impression of life and motion.