Portrait of a Man in his Thirties

Beside the man's shoulder Hals painted his monogram and a few words of Latin giving the sitter's age and the year, 1633. At some point the canvas was cut down along that edge, and the age lost a digit. Enough survives to show he was in his thirties, which is where the title comes from. His name was never recorded, though he was probably a citizen of Haarlem. He leans back and turns to us, as if he has just pushed his chair away from a table. The big ruff is set down with fast, separate dabs of the brush, while the face gets the care: the upward flick of the moustache, small points of light on the lower lip. The portrait came to the National Gallery in 1888, given by the niece of Decimus Burton, the architect of Wellington Arch, as he had wished.