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; her facial expression |
| 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 male 17th-century Dutch master Frans Hals. It is in the permanent collection at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, East Yorkshire. It depicts a young woman seen full face against a plain background. Her name is not known; nor is anything else about her beyond what we see in this painting. She wears a black gown of plain material ("stuff") over a white chemise, with a white tippet over her shoulders and a white coif. Hals probably painted her in Haarlem some time between 1655 and 1660, when he was about 75 years old. The work is executed in Hals's "rough" style: that is to say, his brushwork is visible—not smoothed over or blended. It has been supposed that Hals probably also painted a matching portrait of the young woman's husband and that the two pictures would once have hung side by side.
Andrew Graham-Dixon has remarked of the Portrait of a Young Woman: "We don't know who she was ..., but how important she is as a human being! What a wonderful depiction that is of someone!"