Portrait of a Man in his Thirties

A man in his thirties, dated 1633 at the National Gallery in London, represents the prosperous Dutch burgher class at the height of the Golden Age. The sitter's identity is unknown, but his confident bearing and expensive black costume place him firmly among Haarlem's mercantile elite. 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.

Hals's mastery of the alla prima technique is fully evident, with the face painted in a single session of rapid, confident strokes. The famous millstone ruff is rendered with spectacular economy — what appears from a distance as crisp, starched linen resolves at close range into a few bold streaks of white paint.