Genre scenes have always been popular in Holland. An honest toiler – be it a merchant or an artisan – loved the simple instructiveness of these pictures. Traditionally, each of them illustrated some vice or virtue. All the characters of these scenes were stereotyped. Hals first began to portray the heroes of the genre scenes as living, characteristic people, and not “figures from the card deck.”
His characters bribe the audience with their individuality and naturalness. Call them only members of the household moralizing sketch somehow does not turn the language, so art historians prefer to call such works Halsa “genre portraits.” Genre scenes of the work of Khals were very popular and were snapped up by the owners of countless Harlem pubs and taverns. Many second-rate artists earned a living by copying the work of Khals to order – such, for example, as “Shrovetide Fest”.
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