Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House, Frans Hals
The Old Men’s Alms House was a home where men over the age of sixty could spend their declining years. The home opened its doors to the first residents in 1609.
The building, in Groot Heiligland, still exists and is now the Frans Hals Museum. In 1664 Frans Hals painted the portraits of the regents and regentesses who made up the board of trustees of the Old Men’s Alms House in that year.
The four regentesses who were part of the board of trustees of the Old Men’s Alms House in 1664 were Adriaentje Schouten, Marijtje Willems, Anna van Damme and Adriana Bredenhoff. They are portrayed, with the housemother, in this group portrait by Frans Hals. The painting in the background may be of the Good Samaritan, a subject that illustrates the charity of the regentesses. The portraits of the regentesses and the regents have been both admired and reviled over the centuries – admired for the manner of their painting, which had a particularly marked impact on the Impressionists and Realists of the nineteenth century, and reviled because people thought that the portraits of the regentesses were far from flattering.
