Portrait of Eduard Wallis

Johannes Verspronck and Frans Hals were active as portraitists in Haarlem around the same time. Yet it is difficult to imagine greater differences between their styles! Verspronck painted smoothly and precisely and lavished attention on detail. Hals’s handling is much sketchier, and his rendering of details much more summary. The wealthy cloth merchant Eduard Wallis and his wife evidently preferred Verspronck.