Shrovetide Revellers

Shrovetide Revellers, c.1615. Oil on canvas, 131 x 100 cm
Artist	Frans Hals
Year	1623 (1623)
Catalogue	Seymour Slive, Catalog 1974: #5
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	131 cm × 100 cm (52 in × 39 in)
Location	Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913, New York City
Accession	14.40.605
Website	MET online

Shrovetide Revellers is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1615 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The painting shows people enjoying festivities at Shrovetide (Dutch: Carnaval).

The painting shows the face of an elegantly dressed smiling woman raising her right finger to make a point, while a man with a string of worst around his neck grabs her shoulder to whisper in her ear. Another amused gentlemen leans on his shoulder and listens to their banter. Some claim these are the Baroque theatre characters Hans Worst and Peeckelhaeringh. Behind them other people are talking and laughing.

The painting was first documented by Wilhelm von Bode in 1883, and after that was included in most catalogs of Hals' works, including by Ernst Wilhelm Moes in 1909, Hofstede de Groot in 1910, by W.R. Valentiner in 1923, and by Gerrit David Gratama in 1946. The MET lists an Amsterdam sale entry from 1765 mentioning a genre work of Vasten-Avond, or Shrovetide, and Slive mentions a period drawing by Mathys van den Bergh.

The female wears much more brightly colored clothing than any of Hals other sitters, and shows a strong resemblance to the young woman portrayed in Hals' Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart. Both are considered to be genre works today, so the models could be anyone in Hals circle such as his children or pupils. In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition, Slive included a full color photo of this work to demonstrate Hals' "love of life". The painting itself could not be included in the exhibition because it can never be lent out. It is interesting to note that in the same year that Slive was writing his exhibition catalog, Claus Grimm rejected the attribution of this painting to Frans Hals, though he conceded it was probably after a painting by Hals, calling it a copy of a lost original.