Portrait of an elderly lady

An elderly woman in a millstone ruff and dark cap regards the viewer with dignified composure in this 1633 portrait from the Andrew W. Mellon collection. Hals's portraits of older women are among his most sympathetic works, treating age with honest respect rather than flattery or condescension. 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 aged features are rendered with Hals's characteristic directness, the wrinkles and sagging flesh painted without sentimentality but also without cruelty. The enormous white ruff is built from bold, sweeping strokes of white paint that somehow resolve into convincing linen at normal viewing distance.