Portrait of Duijfje van Gerwen (1618-1658)

In 1637 Frans Hals was stuck with an unfinished job. Four years earlier an Amsterdam civic guard company had ordered a group portrait from him, the only one he ever took on for that city, but several of the guardsmen refused to travel to Haarlem to sit, and that year the Amsterdam painter Pieter Codde completed the canvas instead. The couple in this pair of portraits did make the journey. Duijfje van Gerwen, youngest daughter of a rich wine merchant on the Warmoesstraat, had just married Jan van de Poll, more than 20 years her senior. The idea of going to Hals probably came from her uncle Willem Warmond, who had posed as a captain in one of the painter's Haarlem militia pictures about ten years before. No other portrait of her is known. Hals gave her a huge pleated ruff above a dark gown woven with gold-green leaves and flowers.