Portrait of Willem Croes

Johannes Verspronck, the other leading portrait painter in Haarlem, had painted several members of the Croes family. He died in June 1662, and the specialists in Hals's work think that this is when the brewer Willem Croes turned to Frans Hals instead, a painter by then about 80 years old. The museum dates the panel to 1660 to 1662, while the Hals catalogue puts it slightly later, around 1662 to 1664. Croes, then in his fifties, is soberly dressed and sits in a pose that suited his standing, and his face is built from broad, open strokes, the rough, sketching manner of Hals's last years. The painter monogrammed it FH at the lower right. A drawing made after it was once credited to Fragonard, an attribution since rejected. The portrait stayed in Haarlem until 1906, when Munich bought it from a private owner there.