Sebastian Smee is sweet on Sweerts’s ‘Boy With a Hat’ - Arts

This picture of a young boy in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, was painted by Michael Sweerts, a Flemish artist. Sweerts enjoyed in his lifetime about as much acclaim as an artist could hope for, but he eventually chose religion over art, and was plunged into obscurity from the time of his early death, in the 1660s, until the late 20th century.