Portrait of a Woman

By 1650 Frans Hals was nearing 60 and running one of the busiest portrait workshops in Haarlem, with several of his own sons painting at his side. That matters here, because scholars no longer agree that the master's own hand made this picture. The loose, slashing brushwork Hals was famous for gives way to short, even strokes, and the current view at the RKD assigns it to his workshop, possibly his son Frans Hals the Younger. The sitter is nearly as uncertain. An old note once named her Elisabeth van der Meeren, but almost nothing about her can be confirmed. What the canvas does tell us plainly is written in the upper corner: she was 62 years old in 1650.