Ritratto di Maria Bastiaens van Hout

She sits with one arm hooked over the back of her chair, turned as if someone has just spoken to her. The inscription gives her age, 52, and the year, 1643. This was half of a pair. Dutch couples of means often had themselves painted as matching portraits, the husband on one canvas and the wife on another, hung side by side, and Maria Bastiaens van Hout's husband once looked across at her from a companion picture. Hals worked fast and left the brushstrokes showing, especially in the lace and the hands, so that up close the paint looks almost careless and only settles into cloth and skin as you step back. He was in his sixties by now and near the top of his trade in Haarlem.