Frans Hals · c.1633

Malle Babbe

Name: Malle Babbe by Frans Hals
Brand: Chromora
SKU: hals-malle-babbe
Availability: InStock

Posters from $15.00 CAD · Canvas from $39.00 CAD

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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

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Hand-printed in Ottawa

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Materials & quality

›Canvas & inks

Giclée-printed on archival cotton canvas with fade-resistant pigment inks, hand-stretched over wooden bars. Gallery-wrapped — ready to hang with no extra frame needed.

›Floater frame

Hand-finished solid wood floater frame in five finishes. The canvas sits inside with a clean shadow gap — the way galleries hang contemporary canvas.

›Posters

Premium archival paper — 200 gsm soft matte or 230 gsm vibrant glossy. Ships flat or rolled, ready for your own frame.

›Faithful to the source

Printed from the highest-resolution museum and archive scans available. Each painting's maximum size is capped at what its source scan can support at gallery quality.

About this painting

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.

About the artist

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.

Pairs well with