In the early 17th century, laughter was almost never captured on a painter’s canvas.

Frans Hals changed that.

“He was not a sober painter,” said Friso Lammertse, co-curator of a major exhibition of the Dutch master’s paintings that opens this week at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

“They all work in the same medium: oil paint on canvas, but they do something completely different with it,” said Rijksmuseum General Director Taco Dibbits.

“With Rembrandt, it’s emotion and the human condition. With Vermeer, it’s stillness. And with Frans Hals, it’s movement and it’s joy. Nearly everybody laughs at Frans Hals’ pictures. And when you walk through the exhibition, you start laughing yourself because it’s of a freedom with the brush strokes. Really the brush strokes dance over the canvas.”

The exhibition opens Feb. 16 at the Rijksmuseum and runs through June 9. From July 12-Nov. 3, it moves to Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.