It was first documented by Adriaan Loosjes, who mentioned it in his tribute to Hals in 1789 as being in the collection Gerrit Willem van Oosten de Bruyn.

[1] Much later Ernst Wilhelm Moes included it in his Iconographia Batavia, and Hofstede de Groot documented it again with the following description:WILLEM VAN HEYTHUYSEN.

Behind him a lilac- brown drapery hangs on a fantastic piece of architecture; to the left is a view of a French garden; on the ground lie roses.

In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition Slive claimed it was previously incorrectly dated as 1635 but was actually painted 10 years earlier.

[4] Possibly, as Heythuyzen was a cloth merchant, both were from workshops under his control and this portrait shows the source of his wealth as well as a romantic vision of himself as a bachelor.