Portrait of Anna van der Aar

Executed in 1626, this work is an oil painting on a wooden panel measuring 22.2 by 16.5 cm. The composition presents a half-length figure of the sitter turned three-quarters to the left, framed within a painted oval. Anna van der Aar is depicted wearing a black dress embellished with gold embroidery, a large ruff, and a white cap, with her right hand resting on her bosom. The artist signed the piece with a monogram and the date on the painted frame, while an inscription in the right center records the subject's age as fifty.

The handling of the portrait establishes it as a pendant to the likeness of her husband, Petrus Scriverius.

Frans Hals executed this oil-on-panel portrait in Haarlem in 1626, depicting Anna van der Aar at age fifty as a pendant to a portrait of her husband, the writer Petrus Scriverius. The painting was early recorded in the collection of M. J. Caan van Maurik in Oudewater, then passed to John Waterloo Wilson in Brussels, where it was sold at auction in Paris on 14 March 1881 for 80,000 francs alongside its pendant. It was acquired by Eugène Secrétan and sold again in Paris on 1 July 1889 for 91,000 francs.

The pair eventually passed to Henry Osborne Havemeyer and his wife Louisine Havemeyer in New York, and the painting entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Havemeyer bequest. It was documented by Hofstede de Groot in 1910 while in the Havemeyer collection.

Painted in 1626, this oil-on-panel work is recognized as a pendant portrait to the likeness of Anna van der Aar's husband, the writer Petrus Scriverius. The painting holds a specific place in art historical scholarship, having been documented by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot in 1910 and later included as catalog number 37 in Seymour Slive's 1974 catalogue raisonné of Frans Hals. Historical records trace its critical attention to the late nineteenth century, where it was mentioned by Paul Eudel in 1881 and engraved by Adrien Didier for the John Waterloo Wilson sale catalogue.

These scholarly interventions and sales records underscore the work's established status within the corpus of Dutch Golden Age portraiture.

This oil painting, Portrait of Anna van der Aar, was created by the Dutch Golden Age artist Frans Hals in 1626. Executed on a wood panel, it currently resides in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The artwork is conceived as a companion piece, designed to be displayed alongside a portrait of her husband, the writer Petrus Scriverius, forming a pair.