Portrait of a Woman Aged Sixty
Frans Hals·1633
Historical Context
Hals's Portrait of a Woman Aged Sixty (1633) at the National Gallery of Art depicts an elderly Dutch woman with the same unsentimental directness he brought to all his portrait subjects regardless of age or gender. The woman's aged face — the lined skin, the slightly compressed expression of a person accustomed to containing emotion — is rendered with a penetrating honesty that was unusual in a period when aged female sitters were often depicted with more flattering conventions. Hals's refusal to soften the physical evidence of age gives the portrait its extraordinary quality of presence: the sense that a specific person, in the fullness of their accumulated experience, is genuinely before us.
Technical Analysis
Hals renders the woman's aged features with unflinching naturalism, using warm flesh tones and subtle highlights to convey the texture of weathered skin. The stark white collar is painted with bold, summary strokes, while the dark costume recedes into the background, focusing attention entirely on the expressive face.
Provenance
Jurriaans;[1] (his sale, Van de Schley, Roos, and De Vries, Amsterdam, 28 August 1817, no. 20); Cornelius Sebille Roos [1754-1820], Amsterdam. Charlotte-Camille, Comtesse Boucher de la Rupelle [née de Tascher, d. 1911], Paris; sold by 1905 to (Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris); James Simon [1851-1932], Berlin, by 1906; (Abraham Preyer, The Hague);[2] purchased 12 June 1919 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] held jointly with (Thos. Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London), June to November 1919);[4] (Duveen Brothers, Inc.); sold June 1920 to Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 28 December 1934 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The name is also inscribed on copies of the 1817 sale catalogue as “Jurjans.” See the description of Sale Catalogue N-298 in The Getty Provenance Index© Databases, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles. [2] From The Hague on 4 May 1919, Preyer cabled fellow dealers Scott and Fowles in New York that he had purchased the painting; see Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 229, box 374, folder 7. [3] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 103, box 248, folder 22. Oddly, the Duveen prospectus, in NGA curatorial files, says the painting was acquired by Duveen in 1927, which is clearly an error. [4] The painting was Agnew’s stock number J1821. This information comes from the Agnew stock books, and is recorded in the Public Collections portion of the Getty Provenance Index© Databases, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles.
