The painting's provenance only goes back to a sale in The Hague in 1770; after further Dutch sales it was bought by the Franco-Swiss banker and collector the Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier in 1822.
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In the Scarlet Pimpernel adventure series by Emma Orczy, The Laughing Cavalier is a prequel recounting the story of the supposed subject of the painting, who is an ancestor of her main hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney.
Laughing Cavalier (1624), a painting formerly known as Portrait of a Young Man, by Frans Hals
Cavalier | Cavalier Parliament | Cavalier King Charles Spaniel | Laughing Clowns | Jean Cavalier | Vauxhall Cavalier | Laughing Cavalier | Cavalier, North Dakota | Cats Laughing | Starry Eyed and Laughing | Nancy (With the Laughing Face) | Enter Laughing (film) | Cavalier Marching Band | Cavalier Eternal | Cavalier Air Force Station | Saint James Cavalier | Royalist (cavalier) | Memoirs of a Cavalier | Cavalier (train) | Cavalier (fortification) | Cavalier Aircraft | cavalier | Carry On Laughing |
McEwan's is well known for its cavalier mascot, broadly based on the Frans Hals painting, the Laughing Cavalier portrait, which has been used since the 1930s.
Davis has said that her interest in this period goes back to when a print of the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals hung in her primary school classroom, and was further developed when she read Rosemary Sutcliff's novels Simon and The Rider of the White Horse.