Frans Hals is one of the most famous and most extraordinary Dutch painters of the 17th century. He painted lively, sometimes even cheerful, portraits of people from all levels of society: important people, naughty children and even drunks or people who had been declared crazy. In the 1970s, the critics Kenneth Clark and John Berger argued over the basic meaning of his group portraits of Haarlem dignitaries. Is he celebrating or satirising them? I guess that The Telegraph was about right to focus instead on the fact that he taught the world to smile
