A painting in the National Museum in Copenhagen showing four children belonging to the nobility [Fig. 1] has been till now ascribed to an anonymous artist working in Denmark. In reality this interesting work must have originated in Haarlem, in the close circle of Frans Hals. It presents an early, totally unknown stage of a formal development, when Hals and his circle broke with the hitherto rigid mode of depicting stiffly standing children. This evolution line culminated some years later in the famous painting by Frans Hals Children of the van Campen Family (1623–1625, Brussels). A precise attribution of the Copenhagen painting does not seem possible at the moment. We would like to ascribe it to an unknown Haarlem painter close to Hals and active in the years 1610–1620. The work might have been bought in 1626 by the Danish nobleman Eiler Bille in Holland and brought to the manor in Nakkebølle (South Funen) from where it ultimately entered the collections of the Nationalmuseet in 1929.