Portrait d'un jeune homme tenant un gant

Around 1650, Frans Hals was near 70 and painting portraits with a speed almost no one in Haarlem could match, laying in a collar or a cuff with a few loaded strokes that only resolve when you step back. This unknown young man wears sober black, one glove peeled from his hand, the pose carrying the easy confidence of money. Its later journey says as much about power as about art. The portrait ended up with Frederick the Great of Prussia, and in 1764 he sent it to Catherine the Great of Russia, part of a batch of paintings handed over in place of debts he owed her. That is how a Haarlem sitter came to hang in the Hermitage.