Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove

The work is an oil-on-canvas portrait painted in 1650, executed in the rapid, spontaneous manner characteristic of Frans Hals' brushwork. The canvas measures 80 cm by 66.5 cm and depicts a young man in a black habit with a white collar, wearing a hat and holding a glove in his left hand while the right hand rests on his chest. The gloves signal the sitter's elevated social status, and although his identity remains uncertain, scholarship has linked him to Cornelis Schrevelius, a Haarlem physician.

The painting entered the Hermitage collection in 1746 after acquisition from collector Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky and was later associated with Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great. Its formal composition combines dynamic gesture with a loose rendering of details, exemplifying Dutch Golden Age portraiture.

The technique emphasizes loose brushstrokes and a vivid, almost impressionistic handling of light and texture, while the material support is a canvas prepared for oil paint. The work's condition reflects its age, with a stable varnish layer and no significant damage reported in museum records.

Frans Hals painted this oil-on-canvas portrait in Haarlem around 1640–1650, with sources giving dates of 1640 and 1650. The work may depict Cornelis Schrevelius, a physician and later dean of the Latin school of Leiden, though the sitter's identity remains uncertain. The painting possibly remained with Schrevelius's family into the early 18th century.

The portrait entered the collection of Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, a Prussian collector and merchant. Frederick the Great of Prussia subsequently owned the work before sending it to Catherine the Great of Russia as part of a batch of paintings used to settle debts. The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg acquired the painting from Gotzkowsky in 1746 (or 1764 by another account), where it remains today.

The painting is held in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, with accession details recorded in the museum’s holdings.

It entered the Hermitage in 1764 after being purchased from the Prussian collector Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Prior to this, it was owned by Frederick the Great, who transferred it to Catherine the Great of Russia in settlement of debts owed to the Russian state. The work is displayed in Gallery 249 of the New Hermitage, dedicated to seventeenth-century Flemish painting.

The portrait is widely cited as an example of Frans Hals's signature "rapid spontaneous manner of painting," a quality that has shaped its standing in the historiography of Dutch Golden Age portraiture. The Spanish-language commentary underscores Hals's recognized capacity to convey the sitter's psychology through pose and gaze, while noting that he sometimes only sketches the strokes, a hallmark of his broader practice. Scholarly attention has focused on the sitter's identity, with the subject long believed to be a physician; the painting was formerly titled Portrait of a Doctor.

The work is also linked to the Haarlem intellectual milieu of the Schrevelius family, whose patriarch Theodorus Schrevelius was an acquaintance of Hals and wrote about him in his history of Haarlem (1647/1648). Its provenance through Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great has further cemented its place within the canon of Flemish Baroque painting.

Frans Hals created this oil on canvas portrait in the mid‑17th century, depicting a young man grasping a glove. The sitter’s identity remains uncertain, though earlier catalogues once listed the work as a doctor’s portrait. The painting is part of the State Hermitage Museum’s collection in St. Petersburg, where it has been displayed since the mid‑18th century.