The Rommelpot Player

The Rommelpot Player is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1618-1620 and now in the Kimbell Art Museum. It is considered the best of several versions of a Rommelpot player by Frans Hals.
Painting.
Fifteen versions of this painting were documented by Hofstede de Groot in 1910, who wrote:
"The Rommelpot- Player. In the centre is a man turned 
three-quarters left. He faces the spectator and laughs heartily. He is in 
dark clothes with a broad brimmed felt hat. His left forearm encircles 
the rommelpot (a type of drum traditionally consisting of an earthenware pot covered at the top by a bladder pierced by a stick that is pushed up and down or rotated); in his right hand is a stick with which 
he plays it. Six laughing children surround him. The biggest boy, 
behind him to the right, claps his hands with delight. The other five 
children are to the left. Four of them are placed so that their heads make 
a diagonal line down to the left. The second boy from the top has a 
slouch hat. The fifth child, a girl, stands to the left behind this boy. In 
the background peasants look in at a door. 
Variants of this composition exist. Thus, the girl on the extreme left 
looks at the spectator and not up at the player in the picture of the Paul 
Giersberg sale. Another time, the girl is replaced by a boy who looks up 
at the player in the picture of the Paul Mersch sale while the second 
child from the bottom, a little girl, who usually looks up at the player, is 
facing the spectator. 
A recognised original of this composition cannot now be traced. There 
are a number of replicas which at best date from the time of Frans Hals, 
while some perhaps come from his studio. As the figures are of life size 
in several replicas, it is to be inferred that the original was also of life size. 
The rommelpot-player alone as a half-length figures in a picture in the 
Hamburg Kunsthalle ; signed in Gothic letters, "Fhals"; panel, 10 inches 
by 9 inches; acquired with the Hudtwalker-Wesselhoeft collection, 1888; 
reproduced in Bode's work on the Wesselhoeft collection. 
The chief replicas of the whole composition are : 
Other versions.
Besides this one, the other known versions of this painting are