Frans Hals, Singing Boy with Flute, c. 1623, oil on canvas, 68.8 x 55.2 cm (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] It’s as if he’s saying, “No, no. No more. I don’t want to play yet another song.”
[0:08] [laughter]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:10] You imagine that he’s been singing and playing the flute so beautifully that his audience is asking for more.
Dr. Zucker: [0:17] Well, look at the pleasure on his face. He looks so self-satisfied. He’s just turned away. His hand is up.
Dr. Harris: [0:23] The other hand is still on the flute, as if he’s just stopped with his finger in one of its holes.
Dr. Harris: [0:28] “I can’t possibly play another.”
Dr. Zucker: [0:31] Or he could just be pausing in his singing, which is a standard type that we see in 17th-century Dutch painting.
[0:37] The thing, of course, that carries this painting is its brushwork. Its sense of informality, its sense of the momentary, the way in which the fluidity of the artist’s hand moving through this canvas, and the motion of the figure himself, are so beautifully brought together.
Dr. Harris: [0:51] I thought you were going to say what carries this painting is the feather.
[0:53] [laughs]
Dr. Zucker: [0:54] Okay.
Dr. Harris: [0:55] Because it’s so wild, this giant white feather that completes this circular form that starts down by his mouth.
Dr. Zucker: [1:03] There’s all that space above, so that his face is even slightly lower than center. Also, the sense that there’s space to move in. That the artist has only captured this one frame, and that there’s plenty of other things that are going around outside of what we can see.
Dr. Harris: [1:19] You don’t normally think about Hals as a colorist, but the colors are fabulous in this painting, these mauve purples, and the blue of his sleeve that just comes out a little bit around his wrist, and touches of blue in the green on his left shoulder. And then touches of bluish-white around his wrist.
Dr. Zucker: [1:41] All of which tends to highlight the ruddy warm color of the flute itself, and of course of his cheeks. It is a wonderfully playful moment, so expertly caught. Yet the artist makes the image look so easy to create.
Dr. Harris: [1:55] His face turns away, and yet we feel very engaged with this figure. An incredible sense of bravura and immediacy. Those are the things that Hals is known for.
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