The portrait that changed identities before it vanished

Adam van Hasevelt’s portrait survives in photographs showing different states. One of them preserves the appearance the canvas had when overpainting made it look more like a work by Frans Hals. Historical specialists disagreed about who painted it, and the attribution remains a poor guide if used without the sitter’s name or the Goudstikker inventory number, 2405.

After the forced takeover of Jacques Goudstikker’s Amsterdam business, the portrait was offered in December 1940 at Hans W. Lange’s Berlin auction as lot 76. Caroline Flick’s research traces it through the dealings of Alois Miedl and records its presence in Bilbao’s free port in March 1945. The catalogue description and records from the period use different assessments of the painting’s authorship.

The subsequent location of the canvas is unconfirmed in the sources reviewed. The historical photograph, the sitter’s identity, the Dutch inventory number, and the German Lost Art search record provide separate ways to identify the same object. A present-day picture bearing Hals’s name alone would be insufficient evidence.