Portrait of Tieleman Roosterman

Frans Hals was elected to the Haarlem painters’ guild in 1610 and became one of the most sought-after portraitists of the Dutch Golden Age. This portrait of the Haarlem linen merchant Tieleman Roosterman was painted at the height of Hals’s powers, when his rapid, visible brushwork — the “rough style” — was revolutionizing European portraiture.

The painting entered the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1999 as a purchase through the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund. Hals’s technique of capturing vitality through seemingly spontaneous strokes influenced generations of painters, from Manet to the Impressionists.