Girl Singing (Hals)

Girl Singing is a figurative painting by Frans Hals, who was a male 17th-century Dutch master. Its subject is a young woman singing. More particularly, it is her expressive face as she focuses intently on singing from her music book, and the apparent spontaneity of the moment in which the artist 'captures' her. Girl Singing is one of a pair of pictures Hals painted at Haarlem in about 1628; its pendant is the Boy Playing the Violin. Both paintings have a musical theme. Both show casually dressed young people, presumably at home. They are the same quite small size and each is in square lozenge format, in oil colours on a wooden panel. Possibly the models were two of Hals's own children.