How does Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat elucidate its Description and context?
The work is a half-length portrait of a middle-class man who is about 30 years old. The sitter (who is not identified) has a rather glassy complexion and regular features. His nose is straight, his cheeks are rosy, and he wears a moustache and soul patch. He is turned three-quarters right and smiles at the viewer. He holds his right hand to his breast and leans towards us a little to catch our attention. He seems to rest his right elbow on the picture frame as if it were a windowsill, potentially crossing the boundary between his space and ours. The sitter wears a black doublet and a plain black silk cloak, a white falling collar of fine pleated linen, and a wide-brimmed black felt hat. The background is grey. From the viewer's perspective, the light falls from the left. The portrait is in oil on canvas glued to an oaken panel from later than 1688. It is not signed or dated. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot notes its "broad and vigorous" style, while Katja Kleinert (curator of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) observes that it makes a remarkably dynamic impression for a portrait from its time.In the period when the portrait was painted, black attire was popular among male professionals, ecclesiastics, and magistrates in the Netherlands (where commerce, the sciences, and the arts were flourishing). A big black hat signalled masculinity and self-assuredness. Black was chic, evoking seriousness, religiosity, and restrained sobriety, and Hals was renowned for his masterly handling of black clothes. As Vincent van Gogh enthused 250 years later in a letter to his brother Theo: "Frans Hals heeft wel zeven en twintig zwarten" (Frans Hals must have twenty-seven blacks). The black cloak in particular is finished in the "rough" or "loose" style characteristic of Hals, seemingly dashed off at speed in broad, unblended brushstrokes. It lends his work vitality.Like this sitter, some men wore a falling collar in the Netherlands in the late 1620s and early 1630s as an alternative to the physically and metaphorically stiff "millstone" ruff. Although high fashion at the time favoured an elaborate turned-back cuff to the shirt, this sitter's shirt has only modest lace trim at the wrist, of the kind typically worn by Mennonites.Hofstede de Groot suggested the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat may be a self-portrait by Frans Hals, while Wilhelm Valentiner thought it possibly a pendant to the Portrait of a Seated Woman at Göteborg, Sweden (which is, however, now no longer attributed to Frans Hals).In 1879, Heinrich Justus Schneider, the director of paintings and engravings at Gotha, made a watercolour of the picture gallery at the Herzogliches Museum. It shows the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat as it was then hung (subject to a little artistic licence), near another Hals portrait that is now in a private collection.
soul patch Theo Göteborg Gotha Gemäldegalerie, Berlin oil on canvas were flourishing Heinrich Justus Schneider pendant middle-class man Mennonites Vincent van Gogh Cornelis Hofstede de Groot Hofstede de Groot ruff Wilhelm Valentiner Frans Hals cuff