Provenance

Abraham Preyer

Dutch, 1862 - 1927

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This vertical portrait painting shows a pale-skinned older woman wearing a full, long-sleeved black dress with a wide white ruff at her neck and white lace cuffs at her wrists. She sits in a curving, low-backed wood chair against a pale brown background. Her body and the chair are angled slightly to our left, and she looks directly at us. She has small eyes, pink, rounded cheeks, and a wide chin. Her lips are parted in a slight smile, and her hair is covered by a starched, sheer white cap that flares at the sides. The ruff around her neck is gathered in accordion-like, narrow figure-eight folds, and it extends flat and stiff, nearly to her shoulders. Close inspection reveals that the dress is woven with a black-on-black brocade pattern and has a line of small black buttons down the front. She holds a small brown leather book tooled with gold ornament in her right hand, on our left, and her other hand rests on the arm of the chair. She wears a gold ring on each hand. An inscription is painted to our left of her head: “AETAT SVAE 60 ANo 1633.”
Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman Aged Sixty, 1633, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.67

Portrait of a Woman Aged Sixty

Frans Hals · 1633 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.67

Bibliography

1989

  • Les Donateurs de Louvre. Paris, 1989:298

1996

  • Dekkers, Dieuwertje. " 'Where are the Dutchmen?' Promoting The Hague School in America 1875-1900." Simiolus 24, no. 1 (1996): 67-68.