Laughing Cavalier - History

History

The painting's provenance only goes back to a sale in The Hague in 1770; after further Dutch sales it was bought by the French collector the Comte de Portalès-Gorgier in 1822. After his death the painting was acquired at the auction of his collection in Paris in 1865 by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, who outbid Baron James de Rothschild at more than six times the sales estimate. It was in Hertford's Paris home in 1871, listed as portrait d'un homme ("portrait of a man"), and then brought to London, probably for the purpose of exhibiting it in a large and long loan exhibition of old master paintings at Bethnal Green, which was deliberately sited away from the West End of London to attract the working classes. The exhibition was a huge success and A Cavalier (the catalogue title) a particular hit with both public and the critics; it played a considerable part in raising the critical estimation of Hals in England. By 1888, when it was again exhibited at the Royal Academy, it had become Laughing Cavalier, though a cleaning in the intervening period (in 1884) may have changed the effect. The critic in the Athenaeum noted a brighter appearance, but also that "The man smiles rather than laughs". Hertford's collection was bequeathed to his natural son Sir Richard Wallace Bt., whose widow donated it and his London house to the nation as the Wallace Collection.