Portrait of a Woman Holding a Fan

Hals painted this woman around 1640 and took unusual care over her clothes, which are exactly of that moment. She wears a black gown, a wide collar of fine linen with scalloped lace, deep lace cuffs and a close cap trimmed with lace. The fan that gives the portrait its title was an expensive object, feathers set in a gold mount and hung from a gold chain, and here it does a second job. She tugs lightly at the chain with one hand and holds the mount with the other, and that small movement keeps the pose from going stiff. Her name is lost. Her dress and jewellery suggest the wife of a prosperous citizen of Haarlem, the kind of sitter Hals painted for decades, and she looks straight out at us.