Focus on The Merry Drinker and discuss the Impact.
The earliest known writing on the painting was made by Lord Dover in 1822, an Englishman visiting the newly established Rijksmuseum. In his catalogue, Dover referred to Hals's painting style as "unfinished" but admired the expression of The Merry Drinker's face. In 1868 French journalist and art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger renewed public interest in Hals after writing that the seemingly "unfinished" brushstrokes were actually deliberate, and the painting's position rapidly changed. These nineteenth-century admirers of Hals’s work saw in it a slice of life that was original and exciting. The Merry Drinker remains one of the Rijksmuseum’s most visited paintings.
Hals Rijksmuseum Théophile Thoré-Bürger