HALS, Frans
(b. 1580, Antwerpen, d. 1666, Haarlem)

Willem Coenraetsz Coymans

1645
Oil on canvas, 76,8 x 63,5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Virtuosity of brushwork and the ability to define clearly and succintly the salient features of his sitters made Hals the greatest of Dutch portrait painter after Rembrandt. Painting directly on the canvas without preliminary drawing, the fluidity and expressiveness of his style was later to influence ninteenth-century French and American painters, who also sought to achieve instanteneous effects of reality in painting.