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The Rommel-Pot Player
Workshop of Frans Hals (Dutch, 1582–1666)
c. 1630
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 39.1 × 30.5 cm (15 1/16 × 12 5/16 in.); (Framed): 68 × 61 × 7.7 cm (26 3/4 × 24 × 3 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Joy alights on the faces of a crowd of children staring spellbound up at a rommel-pot player. A rommel pot is a musical instrument made out of an earthenware jar with a stick inserted through an animal skin covering. The player rotates and rubs the stick to produce a droning noise akin to a duck call. It was often played during Shrovetide, the festive period before the start of Lent, also known as Carnival. This street performer wears a foxtail hat, a traditional attribute of a fool, highlighting the silliness of the occasion. Frans Hals’s workshop produced multiple versions of this scene, which was likely popular for the way the artist captured childhood delight.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
