OXFORD, UK.- The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology presents "Travelling Companions: Manet and Hals," on view through 24th November 2002. This touring exhibition from the National Gallery allows us to study two remarkable paintings: Frans Hals’ Young Man holding a Skull and Edouard Manet’s Corner of a Café-Concert. Over 200 years separate these pictures. What can we learn by contrasting Hals’ youth clutching a skull and Manet’s waitress clutching her beer glasses? lt’s a fascinating chance to compare. Over two hundred years separates these two pictures and much about them is dissimilar. Hals shows a youth in fanciful costume holding a skull - presumably a reminder of mortality – while Manet’s picture is of a bustling Parisian café with a waitress serving beer to her customers. But Manet’s art grew out of study and admiration of the art of the past, and the Dutch painter Hals left a permanent impression on him when he discovered his works on a visit to Holland in 1872. Hals was famed in his own time for his virtuosity of technique, and for the bold and rapid handling of paint which sets him apart from most of his contemporaries. Manet seized on this technique as a means of giving freshness and immediacy to his own paintings of modern life. Thus Hals’ young man clutching a skull and Manet’s waitress holding her beer glass have the same vivid presence as they confront the viewer.