Malle Babbe

Artist: Style of Frans Hals (Dutch, second quarter 17th century)

In 1872 Henry James described the painting as "dashed upon the canvas by a brush superbly confident." Hals's authorship has been discounted since the 1880s but the picture must be by a close follower, and is based upon Hals's Malle Babbe of the early 1630s (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) or a lost version of that composition. The title comes from an old inscription on the back of the Berlin painting and may be the nickname of a Haarlem personality. In the seventeeth century, owls were often associated with fools or vulgar behavior. A Dutch proverb, "drunk as an owl," is recalled by the woman's large tankard in the canvas in Berlin.

Although this picture was one of the proudest trophies in the Museum's founding purchase of 1871, it was doubted as a work by Hals as early as 1883, when Bode described it as a free repetition by Frans Hals the Younger (1618–1669) after the Malle Babbe of about 1633–35 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) by his father. Slive has repeatedly dismissed Frans Hals the Younger from consideration, and believes it possible that the MMA canvas is "a copy of a lost original". Liedtke has compared the painting to works ascribed to Hals's sons Harmen (1611–1669) and Jan (ca. 1620–1654), and to other artists in Hals's circle, and like Slive is unable to offer a plausible attribution. The picture is superficially impressive for its bold execution, but it lacks Hals's sense of form and interest in actual observation. The work would appear to date from not long after Hals introduced the subject into the art world of Haarlem, that is, from the second half of the 1630s or the 1640s.

The subject of Hals's autograph work and this related canvas was a Haarlem woman confined in the local workhouse (which was both a house of correction and a charitable institution). The owl was a common symbol of folly in the Netherlands.

[2011; adapted from Liedtke 2007]

Notes:
This painting or a version of it (Slive 1974) was etched in reverse by Louis Bernard Coclers (1741–1817) with the inscription: "Babel van Harlem / uw uil schijne u een valk, O Babel! 'k ben te vreen / Speel met een valsche pop, gij zijt het alleen" (Babel of Haarlem, to you, your owl is a falcon. O Babel, I am glad of it. Play with an illusion. You are not alone).

Etched by Jules-Ferdinand Jacquemart in 1871.
(Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art)