An eighteenth-century label on the back of each painting identifies these sitters as the Haarlem couple Pieter Tjarck and Marie Larp. They likely commissioned Frans Hals to paint their portraits shortly after their wedding in 1634, when Hals was at the height of his career as the most eminent portrait painter in Haarlem.

Donning an impressive moustache, Pieter Tjarck wears a wide-brimmed hat and casually rests his elbow on the top of his chair while dangling a rose from his hand – a symbol of love for his wife. His relaxed pose contrasts sharply with Larp’s upright stance. Her hand gesture may reciprocate his affection, indicating that love resides in the heart, but it mostly draws attention to her faultless posture. Hals’s fluid brushwork records the varied textures of her fine linen, thick gold embroidery and delicate lace, imparting a pleasant, personable character to the sitter’s rosy-cheeked face.

Hals presents his sitters turned towards each other within fictive oval frames. Slight differences in their mouldings have led some scholars to question whether the two paintings were in fact conceived as pendants, but their near identical size, identifying eighteenth-century inscriptions on their reverses, and comprehensive provenance convincingly point to the paintings having been conceived as a pair.

Tjarck and Larp’s portraits remained in their family, being passed down through the generations. They stayed together until the late nineteenth century, when they were sold separately at an auction in Paris. The portrait of Marie Larp eventually entered the collection of the National Gallery in 1972, while that of Pieter Tjarck was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1974. They have now been reunited for the first time since then.