Frans Hals (1582/83, Antwerp – 1666, Haarlem) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606, Leiden – 1669, Amsterdam) are the two masters of seventeenth-century portraiture. Both are renowned for their loose brush strokes and ability to depict people as they truly were. They didn’t just paint rich regents, they also produced realistic portraits of children, actors and musicians. Their style is quite similar but also very different. Rembrandt was always experimenting and kept adding layers to reach the essence of his subjects. Frans Hals seemed to have a more confident and swift style of painting, resulting in paintings that seem to be snapshots of reality.

This exhibition presents a number of unique combinations of works by the two most famous Dutch portrait artists of the seventeenth century. The slow-looking exhibition gives visitors a chance to carefully study The Sampling Officials by Rembrandt and Frans Hals’ Regents of the St. Elisabeth’s Hospital side by side.