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The Credit Suisse Exhibition

Frans Hals

Until 21 January 2024

Rooms 1–8

Four hundred years since they were painted, Frans Hals’s portraits still breathe with life. There’s the hint of a smile, a hand resting nonchalantly on a hip, and just occasionally, a burst of laughter.

Meet the striking characters Hals brought to life in this exhibition of some 50 of his best works. It’s the first major Hals retrospective in more than thirty years.

Hals enthralled 17th-century Dutch audiences. His style was pioneering for the time, showing relaxed, lively sitters, often smiling, and even laughing. This gifted artist’s deft brushwork was unparalleled. He changed the face of portraiture forever.

See these intimate portraits, lively groups scenes and marriage portraits reunited after centuries apart. Amongst them is the first-ever loan of his most famous picture, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ (1624), from the Wallace Collection, and paintings that have never left the Netherlands.

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin with the special collaboration of the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.

Detail from Frans Hals, 'The Lute Player', before 1623–4. Musée du Louvre, Paris © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Mathieu Rabeau 

Ticket prices

Free for Members

Members enjoy free, unlimited entry. Join today 

Standard admission

From £20

Concessions available.

We recommend allowing 50–60 minutes for your visit to the exhibition.

A maximum of six tickets can be booked in the same transaction. For larger group bookings please contact tickets@nationalgallery.org.uk.

With additional support from

The Thompson Family Charitable Trust

 

Gregory Annenberg Weingarten

 

Katrin Henkel
Marco Voena

‘Do not miss this sumptuous, spirit-lifting show’
★★★★★ The Times

‘No words can do it justice. It must be seen to be believed’
★★★★★ The Observer

★★★★
The Telegraph, Evening Standard

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