Ritratto di Claes Duyst van Voorhout

Haarlem in the 1630s ran on beer. Its breweries were among the richest businesses in the Dutch Republic, and this confident man in a shining satin jacket, hand on hip, was almost certainly one of the brewers. An old inscription identifies him as Nicolaes Duyst van Voorhout, who ran a Haarlem brewery known as the Swan's Neck. Men like him were also the people buying pictures. When Duyst van Voorhout died, his estate listed 47 paintings. Hals, the city's great portraitist, catches the sheen of the satin in a few broad, almost careless-looking strokes, the loose handling that made him famous and that later painters studied closely. The tilt of the body does most of the work.