Portrait of a Man

Frans Hals

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned man holds one hand to his chest as he looks at us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left almost in profile, and he turns his head to gaze out from the corners of his dark brown eyes. He has thick, dark brows, fleshy cheeks, and his pink lips are parted. He has a moustache and small patch of hair on under his lower lip. He has chin-length, straight brown hair and wears a high-crowned, brimmed black hat pushed slightly back on his forehead. A flat white collar lies across his shoulders over a voluminous black coat. His right palm, farther from us, rests against his chest, and the other hand is tucked below, mostly hidden by the coat. The wrist we see has a wide white cuff. The portrait is loosely painted, especially in the black-on-black pattern of the man’s clothing and the earth-brown background. The artist signed the painting with his initials in a conjoined monogram near the man’s far elbow, along the left edge of the canvas: “FH.”