User:Frans Fowler/sandbox/Portrait of a Young Woman (Hals; Hull)

Portrait of a Young Woman
Artist	Frans Hals
Year	Between 1655 and 1660
Medium	Oil colours on canvas
Subject	Head and upper body of a young woman dressed in black with a white tippet
Dimensions	60 cm × 56 cm (24 in × 22 in)
Location	Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull, England
Owner	City Museums and Art Galleries, Hull
Accession	KINCM:2005.5003

The Portrait of a Young Woman is a figurative painting by Frans Hals, who was a male 17th-century Dutch master. Its subject is a young woman seen full face against a plain background. Her name is not known. She wears a black gown over a white chemise, with a white tippet over her shoulders and a white cap or bonnet. The portrait was probably painted in Haarlem some time between 1655 and 1660, when Hals was about 75 years old. It is part of the permanent collection at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, East Yorkshire.

Description

"The Portrait of a Young Woman is unforgettable for its serene but direct smile, and for the disarming simplicity with which the figure looks out at us." (Christopher Wright)

The painting is a borststuk, the Dutch term in Hals's time for "head-and-chest portrait". It shows a single female sitter looking straight at us full face, seemingly on the point of breaking into a little smile or at the onset of some other enigmatic affect. "The moment of expression is arrested, as though accidentally, to give life and character to the face." (W. A. Martin)

She is sitting or standing not quite square to the canvas plane. Her left shoulder (to our right) is a little further from us than her right shoulder, so while her face is at the centre of the canvas, there is extra space to the right of her left shoulder. Her face tilts a little to her right. The effect is to modulate what might otherwise seem a less modest stance. The young woman's flesh is pale, her hair black, and her eyes are dark brown. No eyelashes can be seen. The light falls on her face from in front and our left. The plain background is a warm greyish orange-brown, graduated from darker on the left to lighter on the right. Until the picture was restored in about 1952, some parts of the forehead, of the gown, and outer parts of the background showed signs of wear incurred during earlier cleaning work. Hals did not sign or date the Portrait of a Young Woman. The conjectural date of 1655–1660 relies on studies of Hals's painting technique, which changed over time, and on the clothes worn by the sitter.

Clothes and status

Hals's Portrait of a Woman Holding a Fan (about 1649; Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio). This is one of a pair of marriage portraits; its pendant, depicting a male sitter, is also at the Taft. There are similarities and noteworthy differences between this female sitter at the Taft and the one at the Ferens. The woman at the Taft wears a white chemise, black gown (in this case probably a vlieger), and drop earrings, but her tippet has a much more decorative fringe than the one worn by the sitter in the Ferens portrait, her silvery ribbon bow is more elaborate, and she has on an ornate stomacher.

The woman who sat for the Portrait of a Young Woman wears a white chemise under an apparently plain black gown, and over her shoulders a white linen-lawn tippet or collar tied with a small bow of narrow silvery ribbon. The tippet has pleats and a simple frill round its edge. She wears a bonnet or cap fastened with a single pearl-headed pin. On her right sleeve is a little brooch, the shape of which echoes that of the ribbon bow. She also wears drop earrings. We cannot see whether the woman is wearing or holding gloves, or wearing rings, or other attributes that might indicate whether she is married. She does not seem to wear a stomacher, which would be another possible indicator of married status. Nor, except for her brooch, her earrings, and the pin in her bonnet, does she appear to wear any conspicuous signals of wealth, such as an elaborate collar, or any fine lace or embroidery.

The general style of the young woman's attire would have been familiar to the people of Haarlem at her time. One of the regentesses of the old men's almshouse (the second figure from the right in their group portrait by Hals) is dressed similarly. Elements of the young woman's dress could also be "enriched" and enhanced by sitters with more ostentatious leanings, as depicted in Hals's Portrait of a Woman Holding a Fan.

"In the 17th century, women in the Dutch Republic had a relatively high degree of independence, both inside and outside the home." Foreign visitors to the Dutch Republic remarked on the visibility of women in business and public life. For significant periods in the 17th century a substantial proportion of Dutch men were away at sea or at war, which may have left some women space to gain a prominence and independence that was unusual then in other Western cultures. Women could establish their own businesses with capital from an inheritance or from relatives.