Franciscus Hals pictor / W. Baillie sculp. ; Seipse, pinxit.

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Unlike most images of painters, this print reproduces a self-portrait, as the Latin inscription "Seipse, pinxit" (himself, painted) makes clear. The Haarlem painter Frans Hals, one of the great portraitists of the Dutch Golden Age, shows himself with the loose, lively brushwork that later artists admired. William Baillie, a London engraver active in the later eighteenth century, translated the painting into this etching, a medium that carried such images to collectors who could not see the originals. Prints like this helped spread the reputations of older masters across Britain and Europe during a period of growing interest in collecting.

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