" to give protection, to save, to rescue ") the throat and the neck ( the " Hals ").

Early works by Hals, such as Two Boys Playing and Singing and the aforementioned Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia ( 1616 ), show him as a careful draughtsman capable of great finish, yet spirited withal.

Hals refused even to travel to Amsterdam to paint the lucrative schuttersstukken, and a few years after the trekschuit made commuting to Amsterdam possible in 1632 he attempted this in 1636 with the De Magere Compagnie, but gave it up and let Pieter Codde finish it.

Saint Boniface ( c 680 – 750 ), Pope Gregory I ( c 540 – 604, r. 590 – 604 ), Adalbert of Egmond ( 8th century ), and priest Jeroen van Noordwijk, depicted in a 1529 painting by Jan Joostsz van Hillegom, currently on display at the Frans Hals Museum.

* Frans Hals produces the painting now known as the Laughing Cavalier.

This fact found in the Haarlem archives has led to speculation that Hals made a self-portrait in his 1639 painting of the St. Joris company, though this has never been confirmed.

Hals was a master of a technique that utilized something previously seen as a flaw in painting, the visible brushstroke.

" An unusual manner of painting, all his own, surpassing almost everyone ," wrote his first biographer, Schrevelius, in the 17th century on Hals ' painting methods.

For that matter, schematic painting was not Hals ' own idea ( the approach already existed in 16th century Italy ), and Hals was probably inspired by Flemish contemporaries, Rubens and Van Dyck, in his painting method.

Hals had a large workshop in Haarlem and many students, though 19th century biographers questioned some of his pupils, since their painting styles were so dissimilar to Hals.

* Antoon Erftemeijer ; 2004: Frans Hals in het Frans Hals Museum, Amsterdam / Gent ( in Dutch, English and French ), in which various chapters are devoted to Hals ' life, his predecessors, portrait painting in the Golden Age, Hals ' painting technique and other subjects.

The collection consisted of Rembrandt ( 13 paintings ), Rubens ( 11 paintings ), Jacob Jordaens ( 7 paintings ), Antoon van Dyck ( 5 paintings ), Paolo Veronese ( 5 paintings ), Frans Hals ( 3 paintings, including Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove ), Raphael ( 2 paintings ), Holbein ( 2 paintings ), Titian ( 1 painting ), Jan Steen ( The Idlers ), Hendrick Goltzius, Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst.

However, the other European collections include examples of the work of many of the great masters of western painting, including an important version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier Van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others.

The business did not seek to auction fine arts in general until much later, their first major success in this field being the sale of a Frans Hals painting for 9 thousand guineas as late as 1913.

He returned to Europe in 1901, where he visited Spain to study the painting of Velázquez and El Greco and traveled through Brittany, and the Netherlands to see portraits by his " heroes ", Frans Hals and Rembrandt.

Far less scattered in arrangement than this Beresteyn group, and in every respect one of the most masterly of Hals ' achievements is the group called The Painter and his Family, which was almost unknown until it appeared at the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1906.

According to the most authoritative present day catalogue, compiled by Seymour Slive in 1970-1974 ( Slive's last great Hals exhibition catalogue followed in 1989 ), another 222 paintings can be ascribed to Hals.

Hals displayed tremendous daring, great courage and virtuosity, and had a great capacity to pull back his hands from the canvas, or panel, at the moment of the most telling statement.

Many of them travelled to the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem ( since 1913 on the Groot Heiligland, and before that in the Town Hall ), where several of his most important works are kept.

Thereupon, he decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists, including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer.

The most famous Dutch painter was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, but other painters such as Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals are famous all over the world as well.

It lacks works by the most important artists such as Vermeer and Frans Hals but taken together this group offers an overview of the different trends within this school.

Today, the best-known painters of the Dutch Golden Age are the period's most dominant figure Rembrandt, the Delft master of genre Johannes Vermeer, the innovative landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael, and Frans Hals, who infused new life into portraiture.

Probably the most famous image identified as of a " cavalier ", Frans Hals ' Laughing Cavalier, in fact shows a gentleman from the strongly Calvinist Dutch town of Haarlem, and is dated 1624.

At this time most of the art and silver artefacts were also seized and what was not sold or destroyed has survived in the Haarlem municipal collection, which is now in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum.

According to Houbraken, he and his brother were pupils of Frans Hals and like him, spent most of their lives in Haarlem.

At this time most of the art and silver artefacts were also seized and what has survived is now in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum.

: One of the most impressive collections worldwide especially for Early Netherlandish paintings with masterpieces for example of Rogier van der Weyden (" Columba Altar "), Dieric Bouts (" Ecce Agnus Dei "), Lucas van Leyden (" Virgin and Child with Mary Magdalen and a Donor "), Hieronymus Bosch (" Fragment from the Last Judgment "), Rembrandt van Rijn (" The Deposition ", " The Holy Family "), Frans Hals (" Portrait of Willem Croes "), Pieter Lastman (" Odysseus and Nausikaa "), Carel Fabritius (" Self-Portrait "), Gerard Terborch (" The Flea-Catcher ( Boy with His Dog )") and Jacob van Ruisdael (" Torrent with Oak Trees ").

The Laughing Cavalier ( 1624 ) is a famous portrait by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals in the Wallace Collection in London, which has been described as " one of the most brilliant of all Baroque portraits ".

The identity of the man is unknown, and though the recorded 19th century titles in Dutch, English and French mostly suggest a military man, or at least an officer in one of the part-time militia companies that were often the subjects of group portraits, including some by Hals and most famously Rembrandt's Night Watch, in fact he is as likely to be a wealthy civilian.

Other highlights include works by the most famous Renaissance and Baroque painters, including Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Murillo, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and wonderful portraits by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Vittore Carpaccio.

The most important works include Maso di Banco's Coronation of the Virgin, Sassetta's Saint Thomas Aquinas at Prayer, Domenico Ghirlandaio's Saint Stephen Martyr, Gentile Bellini's Portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Giorgione's Portrait of a Young Man, Raphael's Esterhazy Madonna, Correggio's Madonna and Child with an Angel, three works by Sebastiano del Piombo, Bronzino's Adoration of the Shepherds as well as his Venus, Cupid and Jealousy, Titian's Portrait of Doge Marcantonio Trevisani, Tintoretto's Supper at Emmaus, Tiepolo's St James the Greater in the Battle of Clavijo, Dürer's Portrait of a Young Man, Bernard van Orley's Portrait of Emperor Charles V, eight pictures by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Elder's St John the Baptist Preaching, Rubens's Mucius Scaevola Before Porsenna, two excellent portraits by Frans Hals, and a particularly strong collection of works by Spanish masters including El Greco, Velázquez and Goya.

Where Hals contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of patrons, Hals remained in Haarlem and insisted that his customers came to him.

Both conclusions are probably correct, however, because unlike his contemporaries, Hals did not travel to his sitters, but let them come to him.

As in the work of his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn, the impressionism is not doctrinaire, but derives as much from the study of Hals and Velázquez as from modern theory.

In 1642, van Loo moved to Amsterdam, where his contemporaries included Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Bartholomeus van der Helst.

Only once did Hals portray a couple, Isaac Massa and his wife on a single canvas: Double Portrait of a Couple, ( c. 1623, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam ).

Brouwer, who painted the Dutch peasant in his frolics and passions, brought more of the spirit of Frans Hals into his depictions than did his colleague ; but the type is the same as Ostade's.

As early as the 17th century, people were struck by the vitality of Frans Hals ' portraits.

He had just paid a brief visit to the Frick Collection to admire his favorite paintings by Rembrandt and Franz Hals.

According to the Haarlem archives, a militia piece that Hals started in Amsterdam was finished by another painter because Hals refused to paint in Amsterdam, insisting that the militiamen come to Haarlem to sit for their portraits.

Frans Hals, later finished by Pieter Codde.

He studied under the painter and historian Karel van Mander ( Hals owned some paintings by van Mander that were amongst the items sold to pay his bakery debt in 1652 ).

: Image: Willem Heythuijsen by Frans Hals 1634. jpg | 1634

Frans Hals painted a young woman reaching into a basket in a still life market scene by Claes van Heussen.

Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Charles-François Daubigny, Max Liebermann, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Gustave Courbet, and in the Netherlands, Jacobus van Looy and Isaac Israëls are some of the Impressionists and realists who have delved deeply into the work of Hals by making study copies of his work and further building on his techniques and style.

* Frans Hals biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen ( 1718 ) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature

Parts of this article are excerpts of The Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, July 2005 by Antoon Erftemeijer, Frans Hals Museum curator.

In a series of early exercises, he forged works by Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer.

Previously the residence of count John Maurice of Nassau, it now has a large art collection, including paintings by Dutch painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter and Frans Hals and works of the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger.

In 970, he was tricked into coming to Denmark and killed in Hals in the Limfjord in a plot planned by Sigurd Haakonsson's son Haakon Sigurdsson, who had become an ally of Harold Bluetooth.

Portrait by Frans Hals, 1648.