Malle Babbe
Encyclopedia
Malle Babbe is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals
Frans Hals
Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...

, painted between 1633 and 1635 and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. The painting has also been titled as Hille Bobbe or the Witch of Haarlem. It is a tronie
Tronie
A tronie is a common type, or group of types, of works of Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that shows an exaggerated facial expression or a stock character in costume...

, or genre painting
Genre painting
Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...

 in a portrait format, not intended to be a portrait of a specific individual, though a model may have been used.

Painting

The painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 measures 75 × 64 cm and shows the face of a smiling elderly woman, sitting at the corner of a table. With her right hand, the woman is gripping a metal beer mug with an opened lid. An owl
Owl
Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...

 sits on the woman’s left shoulder. The clothing of the woman is simple and corresponds with the mode around 1630. Her face is locked in an almost manic grimace. The very free handling of paint is typical of Hals' style, and not very different from that on his more formal commissioned portraits.

Name

By not properly reading an inscription, Malle Babbe van Haerlem … Fr[a]ns Hals,on the inside the of the picture frame, the painting was for a long time mislabeled as Hille Bobbe. Given the somewhat unconventional appearance of the subject along with the placement of the owl (a possible familiar
Familiar spirit
In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits were supernatural entities believed to assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic...

), the painting was also known as The Witch of Haarlem. However the subject matter of Frans Hals in his other paintings would suggest that the painting is probably of a pub scene.

The Real Malle Babbe

Research in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 municipality of Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

 showed that a real Malle Babbe actually existed. She was included in a list of residents of a work house (Het Dolhuys
Het Dolhuys
Het Dolhuys is a national museum for psychiatry in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The museum was founded in 2005 in the newly renovated former old age home known as Schoterburcht, located just across the Schotersingel from the Staten Bolwerk park. The whole complex is much older than that however,...

), which served as a host for the mentally ill. Around 1642, Pieter Hals, a son of Frans Hals, was also in this work house. Hals and this Malle Babbe had probably already met by this time, as she was a known personality in Haarlem, although none other of her biographical details survive. It should be noted that in Dutch the adjective "Malle" signifies loony and that it is not uncommon to see painters and/or writers depict these types of village figures. In this depiction one can find a record of loony figures of society as belonging to the scenery of every day life, but may enjoy the reference to a thin line existing between sanity and lunacy-a dodgy relationship and position in society to which some writers and painters relate, probe, or of which they are simply aware.

Other paintings

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 is in possession of a nearly identical painting. It is not clear who the creator of this painting is. In the past it was also attributed to Frans Hals, but it is now thought to be the work of one of his pupils.

Song

In the Netherlands, Malle Babbe is also the subject of a well-known eponymous song, written in by Boudewijn de Groot
Boudewijn de Groot
Boudewijn de Groot is a famous Dutch singer/songwriter. He is known for the songs "Welterusten Meneer de President" , "Land van Maas en Waal" , "Jimmy" and "Avond" among others...

 and Lennaert Nijgh and performed in 1973 by Rob de Nijs
Rob de Nijs
Rob de Nijs is a Dutch singer and actor, active since the 1960s.-1962-68:De Nijs, backed by The Lords, released his first single in 1962, Ritme van de Regen. In 1966 he embarked on a joint circus-tour with Johnny Lion...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK