The painting is signed on the left at the level of the collar with the FH monogram and shows a man proudly displaying his fine linen shirt that pours out of his split-sleeve jacket.

The opulence of the fabric is emphasized by the way the man has wrapped his cloak around him, under his right arm to show off his sleeve.

Hals mostly portrayed local people, barring a few rare examples of smaller portraits that were possibly painted for visitors to the town.

His left arm, holding his gloves, hangs down almost straight; the right hand is not seen, but is obviously pressed to his side.

The sitter is not the famous Admiral Michael Adriaensz de Ruyter, as was formerly supposed, but a simple citizen.

[1]In his 1974 catalog of Frans Hals works, Seymour Slive mentions that the painting was shown at all of the shows Hofstede de Groot listed as a portrait of the Admiral De Ruyter, but the art historian Théophile Thoré-Bürger (W. Bürger) first mentioned in 1860 that the portrait looks nothing like the famous De Ruyter portrait by Ferdinand Bol in the Rijksmuseum.