Portrait of a seated woman with a book

In 1788 this portrait hung in the state dressing room at Stowe House, the great Buckinghamshire seat of the family that later became Dukes of Buckingham, paired with a portrait of a man. The guidebooks called the two a burgomaster and his wife by a painter named Van Horst, and in the edition of 1838 they turned into works by Frans Hals. In 1848 the second Duke's debts forced the sale of Stowe's contents, and this canvas went for seven guineas. By the end of the century Frans Hals's prices had climbed steeply, and in 1899, at Christie's in London, it sold as his work for 2,100 pounds, nearly 300 times as much. The Museum of Fine Arts bought it two years later. The inscription at the centre left tells a plainer story. It gives the sitter's age, 47, the year 1648, and a monogram, IH, for Jan Hals, one of Frans's sons. Its old companion, the portrait of the man, is now in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.