Frans Hals · c.1633
Malle Babbe
Posters from $15 · Canvas from $39
An old Haarlem woman with an owl on her shoulder, mid-laugh — Hals's fastest, most modern brushwork applied to a poor sitter most painters would have avoided. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
Up to 8 × 10 in · portrait
Size
Larger sizes are unavailable for this painting because the source scan's resolution wouldn't print at gallery quality.
Format & finish
Archival cotton canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Ready to hang as-is. No external frame.
Scale next to a 5'10" person
+ tax at checkout
The story of Malle Babbe
Malle Babbe is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted c. 1633-1635, and now in the Gemäldegalerie, in Berlin. The painting has also been titled as Hille Bobbe or the Witch of Haarlem. It was traditionally interpreted as a tronie, or genre painting in a portrait format, depicting a mythic witch-figure. The painting is now often identified as a genre-style portrait of a specific individual from Haarlem, known as Malle Babbe, who may have been an alcoholic or suffered from a mental illness.
Adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Frans Hals
Frans Hals the Elder was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He lived and worked in Haarlem, a city in which the local authority of the day frowned on religious painting in places of worship but citizens liked to decorate their homes with works of art. Hals was highly sought after by wealthy burgher commissioners of individual, married-couple, family, and institutional-group portraits. He also painted tronies for the general market.
All Frans Hals prints →Biography adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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