The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals
While London’s National Gallery does not charge for general admission tickets, it does host special exhibitions that require an entrance fee. Previously, the exhibition admission fee was £20. However, the National Gallery will continue a practice initiated last year where the exhibitions will use a pay-what-you-want model for Friday evenings when the museum stays open late. The National Gallery first instituted this policy only during its Lucien Freud exhibition that closed in January 2023, where visitors were free to pay as little as £1. The museum administration continued the policy for its most recent Impressionist exhibition that closed this past Sunday, August 13th. An upcoming Frans Hals exhibition opening on September 30th will use the same policy.
The National Gallery first instituted the pay-what-you-want policy in response to the cost-of-living crisis that has gripped the United Kingdom since late 2021. The prices of essential goods are rising faster than people’s income, mainly because of inflation, supply chain shortages, and the economic fallout from both Brexit and the pandemic. Some may scoff, thinking that people struggling to make ends meet wouldn’t concern themselves with attending a museum exhibition regardless of how cheap it is. But the numbers tell a different story. During the Lucien Freud exhibition, the first time the National Gallery enacted the new policy, around 22% of visitors using the pay-as-you-will scheme had never been to a paid exhibition before. For 6%, it was their first time visiting the National Gallery. When the Impressionist exhibition used the same policy, around 60% of visitors took advantage of it, most attributing their decision to the cost-of-living crisis.
The Frans Hals exhibition, sponsored by Credit Suisse, will feature around fifty works from the Dutch painter, arguably one of the best of the Dutch Golden Age, along with Rembrandt and Vermeer. Most notably, the exhibition will feature Hals’s most iconic work, The Laughing Cavalier, a crown jewel of London’s Wallace Collection since its founding in 1897. Sir Richard Wallace, the founder of the Wallace Collection, was the son of the Marquess of Hertford, who acquired The Laughing Cavalier at an auction in Paris in 1865. Lord Hertford decided to exhibit the portrait in London but did so in Bethnal Green in London’s East End, where more working-class people could view the work. Lord Hertford’s exhibition was a success, making The Laughing Cavalier an Old Masters icon and raising the prestige of Hals paintings in Britain. And now again, a century-and-a-half later, The Laughing Cavalier, among other Hals works, will be on display for London audiences wanting to escape their struggles and look at something beautiful.
The Frans Hals exhibition will run at the National Gallery from September 30, 2023, to January 21, 2024. The pay-what-you-want policy only applies on Fridays between 5:30pm and 9:00pm.