''Portrait of a Man'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the

Dutch Golden Age painter Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Repub ...

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 ''c.'' 1660 and now in the

Frick Collection The Frick Collection is an art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection (normally at the Henry Clay Frick House, currently at the 945 Madison Avenue#2021–present: Frick Madison, Frick Madison) features Old Master paintings and Europe ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The man has been mistakenly identified as

Michiel de Ruyter Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter (; 24 March 1607 – 29 April 1676) was a Dutch admiral. Widely celebrated and regarded as one of the most skilled admirals in history, De Ruyter is arguably most famous for his achievements with the Dutch N ...

Painting

The painting is signed on the left at the level of the collar with the FH monogram and shows a man proudly displaying his fine linen shirt that pours out of his split-sleeve jacket. The opulence of the fabric is emphasized by the way the man has wrapped his cloak around him, under his right arm to show off his sleeve. Such abundant wrist collars are rarely seen in Hals portraits or indeed any

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

sitters. The personage depicted was possibly a cloth merchant or burgemeester. Hals mostly portrayed local people, barring a few rare examples of smaller portraits that were possibly painted for visitors to the town. In his 1910 catalog of Frans Hals works

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 ...

wrote:

247. PORTRAIT OF A MAN STANDING. M. 148. Three-quarter-length. He is seen in full face, and looks at the spectator. His left arm, holding his gloves, hangs down almost straight; the right hand is not seen, but is obviously pressed to his side. He has long dark-brown hair and a slight moustache. He is in black with a close-fitting white collar and white wristbands. His white shirt peeps out at the throat and the sleeves. The sitter is not the famous Admiral Michael Adriaensz de Ruyter, as was formerly supposed, but a simple citizen. It is a masterly painting executed, one might almost assume, without any preliminary sketch, but drawn with the brush. ompare 257.Signed on the left at top with the monogram; canvas, 45 inches by 32 1/2 inches. Exhibited at Manchester, 1857, No. 671; at the Portrait Exhibition, The Hague, 1903, No. 38; at the
Guildhall A guildhall, also known as a "guild hall" or "guild house", is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commonly become town halls and in som ...
, London, 1903, No. 175; and at the
Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
, 1907, No. 47. In the collection of Earl Spencer,
Althorp Althorp (popularly pronounced ) is a Grade I listed stately home and estate in the civil parish of Althorp, in West Northamptonshire, England of about . By road it is about northwest of the county town of Northampton and about northwest of c ...
, No. 507.Hofstede de Groot
on Portrait of a Man Standing; catalog number 247

In his 1974 catalog of Frans Hals works,

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 ...

mentions that the painting was shown at all of the shows Hofstede de Groot listed as a portrait of the Admiral De Ruyter, but the art historian

Théophile Thoré-Bürger Étienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré (better known as Théophile Thoré-Bürger) (23 June 1807 – 30 April 1869) was a French journalist and art critic. He is best known today for rediscovering the work of painter Johannes Vermeer and several o ...

(''W. Bürger'') first mentioned in 1860 that the portrait looks nothing like the famous De Ruyter portrait by

Ferdinand Bol Ferdinand Bol (24 June 1616 – 24 August 1680) was a Dutch painter, etcher and draftsman. Although his surviving work is rare, it displays Rembrandt's influence; like his master, Bol favored historical subjects, portraits, numerous self-port ...

in the Rijksmuseum.Cat. nr. 214, ''Portrait of a Man'', in Seymour Slive's catalog raisonné of Frans Hals paintings After being in the Althorp collection for a half-century, it was sold to the art dealer

Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen (14 October 1869 – 25 May 1939), known as Sir Joseph Duveen, Baronet, between 1927 and 1933, was a British art dealer who was considered one of the most influential art dealers of all time. Life and career Jos ...

who then sold it to

Henry Clay Frick Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major ...

. Slive dated the painting circa 1660 based on the style and clothing. File:Ferdinand Bol and Willem van de Velde (II) 001.jpg, De Ruyter by Bol, 1667 File:Frans Hals 076.jpg, Hofstede de Groot's cat. nr. 257, also circa 1660 File:Bartholomeus van der Helst - Portrait of a young man at half length.jpg, Similar stance and sleeves by Hals pupil

Bartholomeus van der Helst Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613 – buried 16 December 1670) was a Dutch painter. Considered to be one of the leading portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age, his elegant portraits gained him the patronage of Amsterdam's elite as well as t ...

References

Painting record 144722
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

{{ACArt 1660s paintings

Man A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromos ...