The subject of Frans Hals' portrait is unknown, although the Latin inscription on the painting gives his age as forty-eight. He wears a black doublet, or close-fitting jacket, with a pleated white ruff, and a dark mantle draped over his left shoulder. Hals tended to use unified and simplified compositions and to paint subjects in black regent costume rather than in richly embroidered clothes. The overall somber feeling of the painting is relieved by the subject's penetrating eyes and ruddy complexion. Hals' first known portrait dates from 1611; by the 1620s, he was the leading portrait painter in Haarlem. A pendant portrait of the man's wife is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.