''Claes Duyst van Voorhout'' is an oil-on-canvas portrait painting by the

Dutch Golden Age painter Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republi ...

Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, ; ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He lived and worked in Haarlem, a city in which the local authority of the day frowned on religious painting in places of worship but citizens liked to decorate thei ...

, painted in 1638 and now in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Painting

The painting shows a tastefully dressed young man in a floppy hat with his hand on his hip in a characteristic Hals pose. The dress of the man fits his occupation, that of a

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

brewer, but unlike other Haarlem brewers that Hals portrayed, his name is not found in the archives of the local militias. The occasion for which it was painted is unknown, but the painting is probably not a wedding pendant, because Hals was quite consistent with his pendant portraits; positioning the man on the left and the woman on the right. This allowed the light which always shines from the left in his paintings, to shine directly on the woman's face and not the man's. Possibly this portrait was made to decorate a hofje or his brewery, so that people who worked for him or visited the premises could know what the owner Claes Duyst van Voorhout looked like. For the same reason it is also possible that this painting was a pendant to the portrait of a business partner, rather than a wife. For example, the shape, size, period, and position matches that of ''Portrait of a Young man holding a glove'': File:Frans Hals - Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove - WGA11160.jpg File:Frans Hals - Claes Duyst van Voorhout.jpg

Provenance

The painting is one of the best-documented paintings in Hals' oeuvre, first documented by

Gustav Friedrich Waagen Gustav Friedrich Waagen (11 February 1794 – 15 July 1868) was a German art historian. His opinions were greatly respected in England, where he was invited to give evidence before the royal commission inquiring into the condition and future ...

in his description of the paintings of

George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield (5 June 1787 – 18 March 1869), was a British soldier and hereditary peer. Early life A direct descendant of Sir John Wyndham, he was born in 1787, the eldest natural son of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egr ...

Petworth House Petworth House is a late 17th-century Grade I listed English country house, country house in the parish of Petworth, West Sussex, England. It was built in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the desi ...

in 1854. After that it was included by

Wilhelm von Bode Wilhelm von Bode (10 December 1845 – 1 March 1929) was a German art historian and museum curator. Born Arnold Wilhelm Bode in Calvörde, and known as Wilhelm Bode for most of his career, he was ennobled in 1913, and thereafter adopted the ar ...

in 1883, by

Ernst Wilhelm Moes Ernst Wilhelm Moes (1864 – 1912), was a Dutch art historian and director of the print cabinet for the Rijksmuseum. Biography According to the NNBW he studied art at the University of Amsterdam and became a print collector while still a stude ...

in 1909,

Hofstede de Groot Hofstede de Groot is a Dutch surname. Notable people with this surname include: * Petrus Hofstede de Groot (1802–1886), Dutch theologian * Cornelis Hofstede de Groot Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch ...

in 1910, by W.R. Valentiner in 1923, Trivas in 1941 and by Gerrit David Gratama in 1946. Both Seymour Slive and Claus Grimm agree it is by Hals. The MET lists various sale entries from

George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont Royal Society#Fellows, FRS (18 December 1751 – 11 November 1837) of Petworth House in Sussex and Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, was a British Peerage of Great Britain, peer, a major landowner and a ...

's time up to their acquisition date. In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition, Slive included discussion of an old label on the back which listed the portrayed man as Claes Duyst van Voorhout, brewer in "De Zwaanschel". ''Frans Hals'', by

Seymour Slive Seymour Slive (September 15, 1920 – June 14, 2014) was an American art historian, who served as director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1975 to 1984. Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and J ...

as editor, with contributions by

Pieter Biesboer Pieter Biesboer (1944 – 23 May 2025) was a Dutch art historian and prolific writer on 17th-century Dutch art. His specialty was art from Haarlem. Life and career Biesboer was a curator at Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof in Delft during the y ...

, Martin Bijl, Karin Groen and Ella Hendriks, Michael Hoyle, Frances S. Jowell, Koos Levy-van Halm and Liesbeth Abraham, Bianca M. Du Mortier, Irene van Thiel-Stroman, page 280, Prestel-Verlag, Munich & Mercatorfonds, Antwerp, 1989, 20th-century archival research revealed that a Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout indeed was owner of the brewery called the "Swaenshals" (Swan's neck), who testified in Haarlem in 1629 that he was 29 years old, which fits the date for this portrait that was painted about 10 years later.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:van Voorhout, Claes Duyst 1638 paintings Portraits by Frans Hals category:Portraits of men People from Haarlem Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painting

Provenance

See also

References