Artwork · 17th century · Frans Hals

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Barbara Claes (died 1663, called “Malle Babbe”)

Frans Hals1649Oil on canvas74.9 × 61 cm

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At a glance

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A woman in a white cap and a ruffled collar laughs with her mouth wide open as she turns to the side, and an owl perches on her shoulder.
She is Barbara Claes (died 1663), known in the Dutch city of Haarlem as Malle Babbe, or Mad Babs.
The picture has long carried Frans Hals's name, but the Met now sees it as a variation on Hals's painting in Berlin, made in his workshop.

Reading the picture

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Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on her face. Her eyes squeeze into slits, and her mouth hangs wide open. Red is rubbed round on her cheeks, and her nose and eyes are a few swipes of a loaded brush. She looks as if she is about to shout something across the room.
Look at the bird in the darkness at the upper left. It is an owl, with a round face and long folded wings. A few strokes of brown and ochre make its feathers. There is an old Dutch saying, as drunk as an owl, and many writers read the bird as a sign of drink or foolishness.
Look at the ruff around her neck. Short, bent strokes of white, gray, and ochre pile up into a thick tangle. The painter did not draw each pleat. He twisted the brush and dabbed the paint on fast. That quick, rough handling is the hallmark of Hals's style.
Zoom in on the two hands resting at the edge of the table in the lower right. The fingers are folded together, and the backs of the hands are long drags of pink and ochre. Up close they are lumps of paint. Step back and they become rough, working hands.
Look at the white cap on her head. Thin, curving lines of white over a light brown base give the fabric its folds and its edge. Under the cap, dark hair falls across her forehead.

When it was painted

The woman in this picture was a real person from Haarlem. Records in the Haarlem city archives revealed her name, Barbara Claes, and show that she died in 1663. She spent her last years in Haarlem's workhouse, an institution that held both people with mental illness and people locked up for their behavior.

That workhouse touched Hals's own life. His son Pieter was also placed there for a time. In the 1630s Hals was one of Haarlem's leading portrait painters, turning out huge group portraits of the city's civic guard companies. At the same time, he loved to paint the faces of ordinary, unnamed people, like laughing drinkers and children, with his fast brush.

The Malle Babbe that Hals painted himself is in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. There she grips a big tankard. The Met explains that this canvas is a variation on the Berlin picture, most likely painted by a member of Hals's workshop under his supervision. The Netherlands Institute for Art History notes that it may be by his son, Frans Hals the Younger.

The Metropolitan Museum bought the painting in 1871. That same year, the printmaker Jules Jacquemart made an etching of it as a work by Hals. In 1937 it traveled to an exhibition of Hals's work in Haarlem, a brief trip back to her hometown.

Look at her laughing mouth once more. Whoever held the brush, this canvas has kept the face of a woman known only by a nickname for more than three hundred years.

The painter

Frans Hals

1582–1666

All paintings by Frans Hals →

More by the same painter

Merrymakers at Shrovetideca. 1616–17

Frans Hals (1582/83–1666)probably 1650s

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find where the owl's eyes and beak are?
Why?Why do you think the painter showed her in a burst of laughter instead of sitting politely?
What about you?Barbara Claes was called Mad Babs and spent her last years in an institution. What words do we use today for neighbors with mental illness, and how do we treat them?

Same period