DIRCK HALS (HAARLEM, 1591 – HAARLEM, 1656) A Cheerful Group Playing Cards c. 1630 – 1640 Oil on canvas 35 x 46 cm. Provenance Private collection Here, people are cheating, and getting away with it. Seated opposite one another at a table, a man and a woman are playing cards. The man, shown in profile and wearing an elegant red doublet, is laying his cards face down. Opposite him, the young woman is preparing to respond, her eyes searching for some clue from a woman standing behind her partner. Ideally positioned, the latter has a bird’s-eye view of the young man’s hand. From the way they exchange glances, one senses that the two women are in cahoots. However, in this game of deception, other characters are interfering. Behind the player, the man on whose lap she is sitting misses not a single detail of the charade and engages in strange hand gestures and facial expressions. Further towards the centre, a child in turn makes a gesture of warning. But it is on the left, slightly set back from the crowd, that a seated man suddenly imbues this scene with moral significance. By looking at us, he calls us to bear witness, as if to warn us of the dangers of gambling. This is a widespread iconography which, throughout Europe, depicts such scenes of gambling, from Caravaggio to George de La Tour. However, this scene is set here in a Dutch interior, recognisable by its furniture and nautical map, bearing witness to the United Provinces’ dominance of the seas. The lighting and the sober, restrained colour palette are also characteristic of the Dutch school, where the white of the lace and the red of the main protagonist stand out against a monochrome palette of browns. The elegance of the men contrasts with the more dishevelled appearance of the women, whose demeanour is far from shy. Everything suggests that this is not merely a game being played in these parts. Dirck Hals (1591–1656) was a Dutch painter, brother of the famous Frans Hals (1580–1666) who trained him in the art of painting. A member of the Guild of Saint Luke, he spent his entire career in his hometown of Haarlem, where he specialised in group scenes, the ‘Merry companies’, depicting young men drinking, feasting or playing cards, most often in taverns, gathered round a table and in the company of ladies. This genre of painting, which was highly prized at the time, offered a certain counterpoint to the rather puritanical bourgeoisie of the 17th century, whose attention, however, was not lost on the risqué allusions. Whilst from Vermeer to Pieter de Hooch, all painters of the Dutch Golden Age depicted scenes of this kind, Dirck Hals is undoubtedly the master of the genre, whose masterpieces can be admired at the Louvre, the National Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.