The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World

A biography of the great portraitist Frans Hals that takes the reader into the turbulent world of the Dutch Golden Age.


Frans Hals was one of the greatest portrait painters in history, and his style transformed ideas and expectations about what portraiture can do and what a painting should look like.

Hals was a member of the great trifecta of Dutch Baroque painters alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, and he was the portraitist of choice for entrepreneurs, merchants, professionals, theologi...