Portrait of Maria Bastiaens van Hout

Hals was the most sought-after portraitist in Haarlem, and the sitter here belongs to a very different world from the militia companies and regent boards for which he is best known: the museum’s catalogue identifies her as Maria van Hout, a member of the Mennonite community, and reads the plain black dress, the starched linen and the sober bonnet as the manner of a married woman in that circle — while the soft fur and the gloves are the details on which her standing is quietly insisted. Hals’s handling is the opposite of Rembrandt’s elevation. Where Rembrandt weighs and interiorises, Hals works fast and directly, and the museum notes that his portraits are not lofty but immediate, so that the sitter seems to be met rather than staged. The canvas is dated 1643, the moment of the great group portraits, and it is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.