''Claes Duyst van Voorhout'' is an oil-on-canvas portrait painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter

Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...

, painted in 1638 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Painting

The painting shows a tastefully dressed young man in a floppy hat with his hand on his hip in a characteristic Hals pose. The dress of the man fits his occupation, that of a Haarlem brewer, but unlike other Haarlem brewers that Hals portrayed, his name is not found in the archives of the local militias. The occasion for which it was painted is unknown, but the painting is probably not a wedding pendant, because Hals was quite consistent with his pendant portraits; positioning the man on the left and the woman on the right. This allowed the light which always shines from the left in his paintings, to shine directly on the woman's face and not the man's. Possibly this portrait was made to decorate a hofje or his brewery, so that people who worked for him or visited the premises could know what the owner Claes Duyst van Voorhout looked like. For the same reason it is also possible that this painting was a pendant to the portrait of a business partner, rather than a wife. For example, the shape, size, period, and position matches that of ''Portrait of a Young man holding a glove'': File:Frans Hals - Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove - WGA11160.jpg File:Frans Hals - Claes Duyst van Voorhout.jpg

Provenance

The painting is one of the best-documented paintings in Hals' oeuvre, first documented by

Gustav Friedrich Waagen Gustav Friedrich Waagen (11 February 1794 – 15 July 1868) was a German art historian. His opinions were greatly respected in England, where he was invited to give evidence before the royal commission inquiring into the condition and future o ...

in his description of the paintings of the Lord Egremont in 1854. After that it was included by Wilhelm von Bode in 1883, by

Ernst Wilhelm Moes Ernst Wilhelm Moes (1864 – 1912), was a Dutch art historian and director of the print cabinet for the Rijksmuseum. Biography According to the NNBW he studied art at the University of Amsterdam and became a print collector while still a stud ...

in 1909,

Hofstede de Groot Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator. Life He was born in Dwingeloo and spent some time in Switzerland in his youth due to weak lungs, where he learned Germa ...

in 1910, by

W.R. Valentiner William Reinhold Valentiner (May 2, 1880 – September 6, 1958) was a Germans, German-American Art history, art historian, art critic and museum administrator. He was educated and trained in Europe, first working at the Mauritshuis in The Hague and ...

in 1923, Trivas in 1941 and by

Gerrit David Gratama Gerrit David Gratama (22 March 1874 – 20 August 1965), was a Dutch artist, writer, and director of the Frans Hals Museum. Biography He was born in Groningen and was the brother of the architect Jan Gratama and painter Lina Gratama (1875- ...

in 1946. Both Seymour Slive and Claus Grimm agree it is by Hals. The MET lists various sale entries from Lord Egremont's time up to their acquisition date. In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition, Slive included discussion of an old label on the back which listed the portrayed man as Claes Duyst van Voorhout, brewer in "De Zwaanschel". ''Frans Hals'', by

Seymour Slive Seymour Slive (September 15, 1920 – June 14, 2014) was an American art historian, who served as director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1975 to 1984. Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Ja ...

as editor, with contributions by

Pieter Biesboer Pieter Biesboer (born 1944), is a Dutch art historian and prolific writer on 17th-century Dutch art. His specialty is art from Haarlem. Career Biesboer was a curator at Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof in Delft during the years 1973-1976. Bie ...

, Martin Bijl, Karin Groen and Ella Hendriks, Michael Hoyle, Frances S. Jowell, Koos Levy-van Halm and Liesbeth Abraham, Bianca M. Du Mortier, Irene van Thiel-Stroman, page 280, Prestel-Verlag, Munich & Mercatorfonds, Antwerp, 1989, 20th-century archival research revealed that a Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout indeed was owner of the brewery called the "Swaenshals" (Swan's neck), who testified in Haarlem in 1629 that he was 29 years old, which fits the date for this portrait that was painted about 10 years later.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:van Voorhout, Claes Duyst 1638 paintings Portraits by Frans Hals category:Portraits of men People from Haarlem Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painting

Provenance

See also

References