Frans Hals: The Master of Instantaneous Emotion
Monday, November 7, 2016 at 9:43AM 
Frans Hals - Malle Babbe - 1633-35 - Oil on canvas, 75 x 64 cm - Staatliche Museen, Berlin (click photo for larger image)Baroque painter Frans Hals (1580-1666) was the great 17th-century portraitist of the Dutch bourgeoisie of Haarlem, where he spent nearly his entire life. Hals evolved a technique that was close to Impressionism in its looseness, and he painted with increasing freedom as he grew older. He was most definitely an artist ahead of his time.
The name Malle Babbe van Haarlem—which can be translated as Silly Betty or Mad Meg of Haarlem—is inscribed on an old piece of stretcher left in the modern one supporting this canvas. In 1653, the Haarlem burgomasters allowed the local "Workhouse" (which was both a house of correction and a charitable institution) 65 guilders to care for Malle Babbe. The document also refers to Frans Hals mentally impaired son, Pieter, who had been confined in the same place since 1642. Thus a real person served as the model for Hals's painting in Berlin and for a number of related works. The owl was also a common symbol of folly in the Netherlands, rather than wisdom.
This painting shows Hals’ supreme mastery of the rendering of instantaneous emotion and movement. Hals is unsurpassed in this regard. He selected moments when human nature reveals all its vital energy. Most often, his shows the instant when the joy of life is at its absolute highest.
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