48 - Circle of Frans Hals

Circle of Frans Hals (Dutch, 1582-1666) Portrait of a Lady, Three Quarter Length with a Hood and Ruff oil on canvas 44 1/4 x 36 in. (112.4 x 91.4 cm) Property from the Estate of Ambassador J. William Middendorf II, Rhode Island This lot is located in Philadelphia. Framed: 54 1/2 x 45 1/4 x 4 in. Please contact Fineart@freemansauction.com for a detailed condition report. Provenance: with Kleinberger, Paris. Colonel Howard, London. Leopold Koppel, Berlin. Albert L. Koppel, Toronto. Acquired by the Countess Nadia de Navarro, Glen Head, before 1964. Christies, New York, sale of April 14, 2016, Lot 318. Exhibited: Haarlem, Franz Hals Museum, Franz Hals: Tentoonstelling ter gelegenheid van het 75-jarig bestaan van het Gemeentelijk Museum te Haarlem, July 1-September 30, 1937, no. 27, (as Frans Hals). Montreal, Art Association, Loan exhibition of great Paintings, "Five Centuries of Dutch Art" / Exposition de tableaux célèbres "Cinq siècles d'art hollandais" March 9-April 9, 1944, no. 31 (as Frans Hals). Milan, Palazzo Reale, Arte Europea da una Collezione Americana, March-April 1964, no. 15 (as Frans Hals). Literature: Wilhelm von Bode and Moritz Julius Binder, Frans Hals: sein Leben und seine Werke, Berlin, 1914, no. 99 (as Frans Hans). Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, Frans Hals, Klassiker der Kunst, Stuttgart, Berlin and Leipzig, 1923, p. 49. Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, London, Phaidon, 1970, vol III, no. D 66, fig. 187, p. 151 (as Manner of Frans Hals). Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: Entwicklung, Werkanalyse, Gesamtkatalog, Berlin, 1972, no. 8, figs. 10-11, p. 41 & 199 (as Frans Hals). Albert Chatelet and E.C. Montagni, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Frans Hals, Paris, 1976, no. 13, fig. 13, p. 88 (as Frans Hals). Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: Das Gesamtwerk, Berlin, 1989, no. 8, figs. 14a, c and d, p. 26, 27, & 271 (as Frans Hals, circa 1618). Lot Note: Bode-Binder and Valentiner accepted this painting as an autograph work by Hals, datable to around 1619-1620 and around 1626-1628, respectively. While Slive felt that this portrait was produced by a follower of the artist, Grimm placed it among the Hals' earliest autograph portraits of a woman (around 1618), specifying that the sitter's face was repainted at a later date.