The Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis have together purchased two paintings by Frans Hals. Boy Playing the Violin and Girl Singing were previously part of the Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders collection, which was brought to auction earlier this month in New York.

The paintings were purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Association, the Mondrian Fund, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science’s National Acquisition Fund, the VriendenLoterij lottery and Haarlem municipal council.

The two panels, painted in circa 1628, are an important addition to the Netherlands’ public art collection, and to the collections of the two museums. Frans Hals is known internationally for his portraits and his genre paintings: scenes of ordinary people going about their daily business, as might be seen on the streets today. The Dutch national collection has included very few of Hals’ genre scenes until now. The paintings of two children playing music are particularly interesting as the boy and girl may be the artist’s own son and daughter.

The Frans Hals Museum has the world’s largest collection of paintings by Hals, but did not have any of his genre scenes until now. The acquisition of these two panels means that this important element of Hals’ work will also be showcased at the museum. The paintings will be on display at the Frans Hals Museum from mid-July, and will also feature in its Hals-Rembrandt exhibition, which opens in November 2026.

Though the Mauritshuis has some of the finest seventeenth-century art in its collection, Frans Hals is relatively underrepresented in its collection. From mid-October the paintings will be shown at the Mauritshuis as part of a presentation on the development of genre painting in the early seventeenth century. The children will appear alongside work by painters like Willem Buytewech and Flemish artist Adriaen Brouwer, who worked in Haarlem around the same time as Hals.