Portrait of a Couple in a Landscape

A prosperous young couple sit together in an open landscape, the man turned toward his wife with an easy, confident smile while she rests a hand lightly on his. Generally identified as Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, the picture is among the finest works of Frans Hals’s early maturity and one of the first great Dutch double portraits set out of doors. The relaxed naturalism of the pair, caught as if mid-conversation in the open air, marks the break from the stiff formality of earlier Dutch portraiture, and the canvas counts among the most celebrated of the Golden Age.