This vertical portrait painting shows a pale-skinned older woman wearing a full, long-sleeved black dress with a wide white ruff at her neck and white lace cuffs at her wrists. She sits in a curving, low-backed wood chair against a pale brown background. Her body and the chair are angled slightly to our left, and she looks directly at us. She has small eyes, pink, rounded cheeks, and a wide chin. Her lips are parted in a slight smile, and her hair is covered by a starched, sheer white cap that flares at the sides. The ruff around her neck is gathered in accordion-like, narrow figure-eight folds, and it extends flat and stiff, nearly to her shoulders. Close inspection reveals that the dress is woven with a black-on-black brocade pattern and has a line of small black buttons down the front. She holds a small brown leather book tooled with gold ornament in her right hand, on our left, and her other hand rests on the arm of the chair. She wears a gold ring on each hand. An inscription is painted to our left of her head: “AETAT SVAE 60 ANo 1633.”
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The strength and vitality of the people who helped establish the new Dutch Republic are nowhere better captured than in the work of Frans Hals, who was the preeminent portrait painter in Haarlem, the most important artistic center of Holland in the early part of the seventeenth century. This unidentified sitter—one of Hals’ most impressive portraits—was sixty years old when the painting was made, according to the artist’s inscription. Hals conveys her strong personality through the twinkle in her eyes, the smile on her lips, the firm grip of her hand on the chair, and the boldness of her silhouette against the light gray-brown background. The small Bible or prayer book she holds implies a pious character, and her clothing is conservative for the period. The velvet-trimmed brocade jacket, satin skirt, and lace cuffs and cap are nonetheless of the highest quality and remind us that Haarlem’s wealth derived from the processing of and trade in textiles. The woman’s elaborate linen ruff collar, starched and supported by concealed wires, was gradually going out of style at this time.
Hals’ portraits were often commissioned as pendants in which a husband and wife face each other, with the man on the left and the woman on the right. It is quite possible that a similarly sized Portrait of an Elderly Man standing behind a chair, currently in the Frick Collection, New York, is the pendant to this superb and engaging work.
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