Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryPortrait of a Lady
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look at the crisp pleats of the great white ruff and the quick highlights on her black damask sleeves, then find the Latin inscription with her age.
Frans Hals kept to the formal portrait type set by specialists such as Paulus Moreelse, then brought his sitter to life with loose, quick touches of light on the lace cap and the patterned black bodice. The inscription on the plain wall at upper left gives the year, 1627, and her age, 33. The Art Institute of Chicago ranks Hals among the most admired portraitists of the 1600s.
Oil on canvas · 86.5 × 70.7 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Dutch Golden Age
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Portrait of a Lady
- Artist
- Frans Hals (Dutch, 1582–1666)
- Date
- 1627
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 86.5 × 70.7 cm (34 1/4 × 27 13/16 in.); Framed: 107 × 91.4 × 6.4 cm (42 1/8 × 36 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Max and Leola Epstein Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.






