Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste

Frans Hals is famous for the loose, laughing energy of his brushwork, so this quiet, buttoned-up portrait tells you something specific about the sitter. Feyntje van Steenkiste and her husband, a well-off Haarlem merchant, were Mennonites, members of a Protestant group that valued plainness. So even though the couple could clearly afford finery, Hals shows her in sober black, her wrists trimmed with only the faintest hint of white lace. It was painted around 1635 as one of a pair, hung beside a matching portrait of her husband. She did not have many years left after posing for it. Feyntje was buried in 1640, and her widower remarried within months.