  About the Artwork
  
  
  Portrait of a Woman is a markedly restrained painting by Frans Hals, who is best known for his swaggering, bravura portraits rendered with a quick and impressionistic brush. The smoothly modeled brushstrokes and minute attention to detail reflect the classicizing style Hals occasionally experimented with in the mid-1630s. The figure wears the conservative outfit typical of a seventeenth-century upper-middle-class Dutch citizen — complete with a broad-shouldered black jacket and stiff white ruff. Her only adornments are the subtle flower embroidery on her white cap and the delicate edging of lace visible at her wrists. This sober style of dress underlines the liveliness of the sitter’s face, with its amused smile and slightly skeptical look in her sparkling dark eyes.
  
  
  Title
  Portrait of a Woman
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1634
  
  Artist
  Frans Hals
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  ca. between 1582 and 1583-1666
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Dutch
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on oak panel
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 28 3/4 × 22 1/8 inches (73 × 56.2 cm)
  Framed: 38 1/2 × 31 5/8 × 1 7/8 inches (97.8 × 80.3 × 4.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  City of Detroit Purchase
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  23.27
  
  
  Copyright
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