Portrait of a young girl with a fan

Portrait of a young girl with a fan, painted around 1650 and without a specified institutional collection in current records, belongs to the small category of de Vos's late child portraits, produced in the final years of his career. Fans were fashionable accessories for women and older girls in seventeenth-century Flemish portraiture, associated with courtly refinement and feminine grace. A young girl posed with a fan suggests a portrait of a girl of some social standing, dressed and posed in a manner that anticipates her adult role as a genteel Flemish woman. De Vos's child portraits are among his most humanly engaging works; his portraitist's ability to capture individual physiognomy gives these images a specific psychological presence that distinguishes them from idealized representations of childhood. By 1650, de Vos was in his seventies, and the late works often show a slightly looser, more economical handling than the meticulously built surfaces of his mature middle career.

The fan — a delicate object of folded paper or fabric on thin sticks — requires careful still-life rendering to convey its fragile luxury. The child's face would receive the most careful attention, with thin glazed flesh tones built over a warm ground. Dress details in 1650 would include elaborate lace and ribbons appropriate to a child of wealthy family.