Image of Frans Hals’ “Member of the Haarlem Civic Guard,” courtesy the National Gallery of Art

Written by Aleid Ford, who is profiling 365 masterworks at the National Gallery of Art this year for her project Art 2010, which appears on her website Head for Art.

This Member of the Haarlem Civic Guard, (c. 1636) by the Dutch artist Frans Hals (c. 1582 – 1666) caught my eye rather quickly on a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art. Who would’ve thought, more than 300 years after the making, that this portrait, with its festive festoon of facial hair, would’ve been so bang-on trendy in 2010? It’s been a long time since we took the Victorian view that “kissing a man without a mustache is like eating an egg without salt.”

Recently though, UK photographer Alan Powdrill started spotting intrepid and trendy facial hair forays in East London, and his series “Tashmen” is the result. He says: “Walk around in Brick Lane and Shoreditch, and you’ll see loads of painfully cool people who look great – with moustaches.” Powdrill’s portraits show all sorts of styles (small, stiff, big, baggy, waxed, wild, Edwardian, Eighties) and suggest fab new fashion status.

Our Civic Guard here opts for a fine, ferrety mustache, with a tufty add-on tail trailing chin-wards. This man is a soldier (seen from his steel breastplate) but on the days this picture was painted, he put on his Sunday best (broad-brimmed hat, lace collar and cuffs) instead of his work clothes.