Lot Essay
Very little is known about Dirck Hals and excepting a visit to Leiden in the early 1640s, most of his career seems to have been spent in Haarlem where he worked in the shadow of his elder brother Frans Hals. 'Merry Companies', such as the present work, were his most popular compositions. This genre had been introduced by the Rotterdam painter Willem Pietersz. Buytewech who lived in Haarlem from 1612-17. Hals refined these compositions into scenes of levity, often combined with a hidden meaning about vanity and the folly of sensual enjoyment. The many figures that recur in his paintings, often in the same poses, are a testament to his practice of reusing preparatory drawings, as well as to the conventions of the merry company theme in which stereotypical figures were seen in different roles and poses. For instance, the standing figures in the present work are mirrored by a similar couple in a signed and dated Merry Company of 1624 (with Douwes, Amsterdam, 1986). The present work can be dated to circa 1624/5 by comparison with signed and dated paintings of 1624 offered at Christie's, London, Nov. 26, 1965, lot 46; and Christie's, New York, June 5, 1985, lot 155; and to A Musical Party, the Michaelis Collection, Cape Town, Inv. no. 14/24.