The genius of Frans Hals

Since art auctions were invented, they have served to hype artists’ prices. It can happen during an artist’s lifetime — Jeff Koons’s ‘Balloon Dog’ — or half a millennium after their death — Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’. And it can sometimes restore a lost reputation, as happened with Frans Hals.

When the picture now famous as ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ came up for auction in Paris in 1865, Hals was all but forgotten. A successful portraitist in his lifetime, he never made much money — with a wife and at least ten children, he remained a renter throughout his career — and after his death his reputation, overshadowed by Rembrandt’s, was tarnished by claims that he was a piss artist. In the 19th century the modernity of his style began to pique the interest of connoisseurs, but it was the bidding battle for the mystery ‘Cavalier’ (the ‘Laughing’ was added later) between Baron James de Rothschild and the 4th Marquess of Hertford that sent his prices soaring.