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#108: By Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator Transcript

This portrait was painted when the Antwerp-born artist Frans Hals was in his seventies. His clients were mainly prosperous burghers from Haarlem, where he worked for most of his career.  

The portrait of this unidentified man is painted with extraordinary directness. Great bursts of white fabric dramatically come through the fashionably slashed sleeves. Hals ingeniously plays with the triangles of white and gray. The glove the man is holding is sketched in with just a few strokes.  This self-confident, abbreviated way of representing forms would be greatly admired in the nineteenth century by artists such as Édouard Manet.

Portrait of a Man

 (Dutch, ca. 1581–1666)
Dateca. 1660
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions44 1/2 x 32 1/4 in. (113 x 81.9 cm)
Credit LineHenry Clay Frick Bequest
Accession number1917.1.70
Collection History

Bought between 1850 and 1857 from a dealer, possibly C. Redfern, Warwick, by Frederick, fourth Earl Spencer, Althorp House, Great Brington, Northamptonshire. Duveen. Frick, 1917.

Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.

Oil painting of standing man wearing black
Frans Hals
ca. 1627–30
Oil painting of man wearing black and sitting in chair
Frans Hals
ca. 1650
Oil painting of sitting woman wearing black
Frans Hals
1635
oil painting of a man wearing a red cap and a black fur-trimmed cloak
Titian (Tiziano Vecellio)
ca. 1520
Half-length portrait of a young woman in a pink dress embroidered with golden floral patterns. …
Giovanni Battista Moroni
ca. 1575
oil painting of woman wearing a black dress with gold jewelry and holding a closed gray fan
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
1824
oil painting of a Venetian Procurator with a white beard and wearing a red cloak
Circle of Jacopo Tintoretto
16th century
Oil painting of woman standing in black dress
Gerard ter Borch
ca. 1665–70
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