Ritratto d'uomo

Nobody knows who this man was. Frans Hals painted him around 1660, near the very end of a long life. Hals was close to 80 and would die within a few years, and by then his brushwork had loosened into something almost startlingly quick. Up close the collar and face dissolve into separate strokes of silver-grey, brown and white, laid down fast and left unblended, so the likeness only pulls together at a distance. Younger painters were still polishing every surface smooth. This anonymous sitter reached Paris much later, bought in 1912 by Nelie Jacquemart, whose art-filled mansion, gathered with her late husband Edouard Andre, is now the museum around it.