Portrait d'un homme

The inscription on the canvas gives the year, 1634, and the sitter's age, 26. What hangs in Budapest is a piece of a larger picture. The man was originally shown down to the knees, and that is known from old drawn copies kept in Frankfurt and from the portrait of his wife, painted as its companion and now in Baltimore.

Pairs like this were commissioned to hang together on the wall of a Dutch house, husband and wife turned slightly towards each other, and it was the art market of later centuries that separated them. Hals was then at the height of his practice in Haarlem, painting the merchants and officers of a republic that had money and was still formally at war with Spain. The black of the man's clothes is worked wet into wet in several tones, and the lace at his collar is laid on in thick strokes of white that only settle into lace when you step back.