Portrait of a man

By the mid-1640s most fashionable Dutchmen had given up the stiff ruff, and this sitter wears what replaced it, a broad flat collar of fine linen edged in lace, under a wide black hat. Hals painted him around 1645. We do not know his name, only that he dressed expensively. He leans back and pushes an elbow toward us, head tilted, a pair of gloves bunched in one hand, and the whole pose seems caught in motion. Look closely at the edge of the collar. The lace is there only as a row of tiny stipple marks, the briefest touches of the brush, which read as lace from a step away. The portrait reached the National Gallery in 1910 in the bequest of George Salting, a wealthy London collector.