Portrait of a Preacher

Nobody wrote this man's name down, and his title rests entirely on his clothes. He wears a small black skullcap, a black gown and a plain white collar, the dress of a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and in his last years Frans Hals painted several such men in Haarlem. Here the face is the one part built up with care, ruddy and creased, the eyes turned straight at us under grey hair. The gown is a few broad sweeps of black, and the hands resting at the lower edge are barely more than a sketch. A monogram, FH, sits at the lower right. The Museum of Fine Arts catalogues the panel as Hals's own work of about 1660. The catalogue of Hals and his workshop published in 2023 is less certain, and suggests that Hals laid out the picture and an assistant, possibly his son Frans the Younger, finished it. The painting belongs to the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, who have promised it to the museum.