Elegant company merrymaking in an interior

Relatively little is known about Dirck Hals and with the exception of a visit to Leiden in the early 1640s, he seems to have spent his entire career working in Haarlem in the shadow of his elder brother, Frans Hals. The genre of 'merry companies', for which Dirck is best known, was first introduced to the Haarlem painters by the Rotterdam artist Willem Buytewech, who lived in Haarlem between 1612 and 1617. Dirck assimilated a style that drew both on Buytewech and his brother; his interiors were often composed around a centrally positioned table with elegant figures disporting around it.