Frans Hals Museum

This museum in Haarlem sits inside a former almshouse for old men, built in 1609, and that setting is part of its best story. In 1664, near the end of his life and around 80 years old, Frans Hals painted the men and women who governed this very institution, the regents and regentesses of the old men's home. Those two group portraits now hang in the building where their sitters once held authority.

Hals was the great portraitist of Haarlem's citizens, and the museum keeps his large militia pieces too, banquets of the civic guard from 1616 and 1627 where officers in sashes lean and toast around a table. He painted faces with quick, loose strokes that look almost unfinished up close and settle into life at a few steps back.

The Frans Hals Museum has held these works since 1913, alongside other Dutch Golden Age painters of the city. Stand near the regentesses and you can see how thin the paint is, dragged on fast by an old man's hand.