Portraitist Spanish Netherlands
Frans Hals was a Dutch painter who painted during the so-called Golden Age. He is considered to be one of the most important old Dutch masters. As far as is known, Frans Hals worked all his life in Haarlem and became best known for his lively and colourful paintings of his contemporaries.
Jan Frans van Douven was a Dutch painter of the late 17th and early 18th centuries from the Southern Netherlands, a representative of the Leiden School. He is known as a portrait painter.
Van Douven spent most of his life in Düsseldorf, where as court painter he painted many portraits, including portraits of the Palatinate Elector Johann-Wilhelm and his second wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. He was also instrumental in the creation of the art gallery in the Düsseldorf Palace. The artist accompanied his sovereign on a trip to Vienna, where he painted portraits of the Austrian emperor and his wife, as well as other aristocrats and famous personalities.