Portrait of Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen

Frans Hals's portrait of Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen (1634) in the Rijksmuseum was painted as a pendant to her husband Tieleman Roosterman's portrait. The Van Diemen family was part of Haarlem's prosperous mercantile class who formed the core clientele for Hals's portrait practice. Hals's revolutionary loose brushwork, capturing the immediacy of fleeting expression with a boldness that seemed impossibly spontaneous to his contemporaries, was rediscovered by the Realists and Impressionists in the nineteenth century as an anticipation of their own aims.

The elaborate ruff and embroidered cuffs are painted with Hals's signature abbreviated technique, creating the illusion of complex lace patterns with economical, precisely placed brushstrokes.