Portrait of Paulus Verschuur  1643

Paulus Verschuur served seven terms as burgomaster of Rotterdam and was also a director of the East India Company. Despite Hals's reputation for conviviality, his mature portraits are often sober and restrained in all but their brushwork. This may have influenced Verschuur's choice of the artist over a fashionable portraitist of Rotterdam or The Hague, but the sitter also ...