Portrait of a Young Man

Frans Hals was the preeminent portrait painter in Haarlem, the most important artistic center of Holland in the early part of the seventeenth century. He was famous for his uncanny ability to portray his subjects with relatively few bold brushstrokes, and often used informal poses to enliven his portraits.Glancing straight at the viewer, this portly gentleman rests his elbow on the back of his chair. Hals’ earliest known use of this pose dates to 1626, and he continued to use it throughout his career. (See, for example, the National Gallery of Art’s portrait of Willem Coymans, 1645.) As is characteristic of Hals, the sitter’s face is more firmly modeled and detailed than are his costume and accessories, which are rendered in broader, more abstract brushstrokes. Hals has made the man’s face come to life by adding rapidly applied accents over the broad flesh tones. A few wavy strokes depict the lion’s-head finial of the chair, and an emphatic crisscross pattern describes the man’s flat lace collar.Just above the sitter’s hand, Hals signed the work with his initials—not just once, but twice: FHFH. Multiple interpretations have been proposed for this unique double monogram, including the possibility that Hals here portrayed his son Frans Hals the Younger (1618–1669).[1] Although Hals’ son would have been the appropriate age for this portrait, no other supporting evidence for this identification exists, so the identity of the sitter and the reason for the double monogram remain mysteries.[1] Petr Petrovich Semenoff, Études sur l’histoire de la peinture néerlandaise, 2 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1885), 1:254, and Andrei Ivanovich Somof, Ermitage Impérial: Catalogue de la galerie des tableaux, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1901), 2:139–140, no. 770.