Malle Babbe

The Malle Babbe (English: " The Crazy Barbara ") is a painting by the Dutch painter Frans Hals, which was built around 1633 to 1635. It now hangs in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and is owned by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is also known under the name Hille Bobbe and Witch of Haarlem.

• 5.1 The New York Malle Babbe
• 5.2 Malle Babbe by Gustave Courbet
• 5.3 copies of North American artists
• 5.4 copies without immediate reference to Frans Hals
• 5.5 Han van Meegeren

• 7.1 Documents cited
• 7.2 Literature

Image description

The 75 × 64 cm large painting shows a breast Portrait of an old, laughing woman sitting at the edge of a table. With the right hand, the woman is holding the handle of a beer mug. The pitcher is made ​​of metal with a lid that is open, and stands on the in the lower right corner just recognizable corner of a wooden table. The viewer sees the front of the pitcher with a no more accurate reflection to be recognized as well as the inside of the open lid. On the left shoulder of woman sitting an owl a not precisely be determined species whose looking towards the viewer has, while her body is turned so that the right wing is visible.

The painted woman wearing a garment of brown cloth without gaudy adornments. This is tied by a phantom white apron at the hips. On her head she has a white hood and the neck is obscured by a thick white, crumpled collar, which extends to the chest muscles. This attire corresponds especially the fashion of the 1630s, which could be found as everyday and work clothes but also in the following decades. The woman is sitting with the front of the body in a slight bevel parallel to the table and is propped up on the right elbow. In this posture, her head is turned so that she looks to the right edge and in the lower left corner; what they look remains hidden to the viewer. The entire face is distorted into a broad smile with her ​​mouth slightly open and eyes narrowed and solidifies in this grimace.

The arrangement of the owl, the woman and the beer mug, a very strict diagonal from the upper right corner to the lower left. This is resolved by the sight of the old woman, who gives a cruising diagonal. The illumination of the image is slightly offset to the left from the front and is emphasized in particular by the reflections on the pitcher and in the right half of the face of the woman as well as the shadow on the right side of the face, the shadowed from jug chest, and the back of the woman. As colors prevail mainly dark browns and grays.

Of special importance was the image by the technique, which is not typical for the work of the 17th century and recalls in its stylistic execution rather of the Impressionists of the 19th century. The picture was painted with short, very strong brush strokes and lacks typical of his time fine versions of details. Some aspects such as the loop of the skirt act inserted volatile and quickly by just a few brush strokes, giving the impression of a very dynamic and alive to the viewer.

Name issue and identity of the sitter

The name of the painting in the literature varies between today recognized name Malle Babbe and to be considered as invalid name Hille Bobbe. So the malls Babbe is up in the mid 19th century called Hille Bobbe and become known.

This was due to a faulty copy of the name designation on a portion of the inner stretcher, which was introduced in the 17th or early 18th century there. This is labeled Malle Babbe van Haerlem ... Fri [ a] ns neck instead Malle Babbe was, however, read Hille Bobbe and named the image with that name. Only through the publications of Théophile Thoré under the synonym Willem citizens of Frans Hals and especially about the malls Babbe the error was cleared up in 1868 and 1869. From whom the label originates is unknown, Frans Hals has the image are not signed or labeled or dated.

The crazy Babbe could be identified as real, existing woman by the name or nickname Malle Babbe due to an archive discovery of Gemeentearchief Haarlem, which was housed in 1653 in the workhouse of Haarlem and for the Leprosenhaus 65 guilders contributed to the maintenance. This was at that time as a prison and the madhouse.

His son Pieter Frans Hals was also placed around the same time in the working Shui. This was brought to a resolution of the Mayor of Haarlem from June 13, 1642 as moronic for the rest of his life in the workhouse. The annual cost of housing in the amount of 100 guilders paid also a part of the leper, the rest was applied by Elisabeth Hospital ( Ste Elizabeth Gasthuis ) and the Haarlem arms Fund. It is likely that the real neck Babbe already met earlier or this was generally known in Haarlem. Pieter neck died in 1667 and was buried on 8 February of the year on the Zuider Kerkhof, the Haarlem South Cemetery. About Malle Babbe there are no other sources, more than their existence is not known respectively.

Dating

The emergence period of Malle Babbe is discussed to date with the current preferred version of Slive of a development order 1633 to 1635 goes out. Frans Hals himself the image neither signed nor dated, thus the dating must be done by the painting style and other evidence. Thus, the Malle Babbe is dated the latest genre picture neck as he then shifted his work on portraits and group portraits. The painting style of the malls Babbe is described as concisely and consistently and to anticipate the late style of painting.

Gustave Courbet added to his copy of the Malle Babbe a signature Frans Hals and the date 1645, but which is regarded as the invention and not to the original state of the image, as described at the same time by Théophile Thoré. This undated image 1869 1630-1640, by Carl von Lützow it originated in the 1640s and Wilhelm von Bode and W. Unger and C. Vosmaer represented a position to 1650th The latter are by the appearance of the document of 1653, with the the real Malle Babbe can be identified, confirmed.

Interpretation and iconography

The Malle Babbe was interpreted and interpreted, with particular expression on her face with the broad smile and the owl and the beer mug as elements of the image play an important role in many ways.

The Witch of Haarlem

So it is today frequently referred to and described as a witch of Haarlem, where, for example, Seymour Slive is 1989, that one need not believe in witchcraft, " to be convinced that their wild, animal-like movements and their demonic laughter not result from how much it has consumed the contents of their gigantic pitcher but that both are dominated by more powerful, more mysterious powers. "He compares this effect with the works of the late Francisco de Goya, who is said to have conjured similar to the dark side of man. The interpretation as a witch or demon possessed woman steps today, however, generally more in the background, especially in comparison with other paintings by the artist.

Owl and Pewter as a sign of drunkenness

The pewter jug ​​and the owl on the image are viewed as significant symbols of drunkenness. The face and the behavior of the malls Babbe on the picture are clearly influenced by alcohol and by the enormous size of the drinking vessel is this put in the foreground. The neck was probably added later in the image introduced owl is now majority also based on the alcohol and drunkenness, the Dutch proverb "Zoo beschonken as een uil " (engl.: " drunk as an owl " ) is in the foreground. Although the owl is considered a nocturnal animal in traditional folk and superstition as a symbol of sin and evil, this interpretation plays only a minor role in the picture.

The New York Malle Babbe or you no longer known modeled on Louis Bernard Coclers as a template for his wrong- etching to Malle Balle. Appears on its image below the image following couplet:

"F neck pinxt L B Coclers sculpt Babel van Haarlem uw uil schijne u een valk, O Babylon! vreen 'k ben te Speel met een valsche pop, gij zijt net nit avenues "

To German:

"Babel of Haarlem You is your owl a falcon, O Babylon! Mir 's supposed to be quite Playeth with an illusion, you are not alone in "

• Bartolomaeus Maton: A fool with an owl

The laughter of the company

• Laughter: reference to other images neck ' - a central element of portraits by Frans Hals. " Laugh An't kendmen the Zoot "

I 've been thinking about Heyerdahl's words: " The n'aime pas qu'une figure soit trop corrompue « 1 - told in drawing not a woman but an old man with a bandage over his eye, and I found it not true. There are such ruins of faces in which something is yet, I for one find it in the ' " Hille Bobbe " by Frans Hals expressed very well or in the minds of some of Rembrandt. (Letter to Theo van Gogh, The Hague, February 5, 1883 )

Influence on later works and copies

The Malle Babbe was reproduced in numerous copies and variations, especially shortly after their formation in end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century and the beginning of Impressionism in the late 19th century.

The New York Malle Babbe

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is in possession of the original -like portraits, which is also managed as Malle Babbe and the former collection Cornet comes since 1871. The artist of this image is unknown until about 1880 it was, however, regarded as a painting Frans Hals'; the description in the museum recorded it today as " in the style of Frans Hals ".

The 74.9 × 61 cm large painting differs from the original mainly by the fact that the composition is reversed and the owl sits appropriately on the right shoulder. The owl is tied to the legs by a cord that pulls up to the folded hands on the table, also holds the Babbe in this image is no beer mug in his hands. Signed the image with " FH", which can explain the earlier assignment to Frans Hals.

The New York Malle Babbe also originated in the 17th century and was probably a copy of the original or a no longer known today version of the image. This assumption is also confirmed by Slive, 1989, where he the direct environment Frans Hals' assigns the unknown artist. By a color analysis could be demonstrated that the temporal position is realistic because no colors were used, which were in use, after the dating. One also voiced suspicion, Frans Hals the Younger was the author of the image is discarded by Seymour Slive, instead, he assumes that the unknown artist probably two more also formerly Frans Hals painting attributed can be associated with the titles fishing girl from Cologne and Cincinnati. Stukenbrock considers this contrast for excluded because, qualified significantly higher New York Malle Babbe whether as fishermen girls and has been demonstrated at least for the Cologne picture that it was painted after the 17th century.

The New York Malle Babbe or you no longer known modeled on Louis Bernard Coclers as a template for his aforementioned etching to Malle Balle.

Malle Babbe by Gustave Courbet

In 1869, Gustave Courbet created a copy of the malls Babbe, which today hangs in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. He signed it his Malle Babbe both with his own signature as well as the signature of Frans Hals' and supplemented with the year 1645, so the tribute to neck became clear. He had seen the painting in 1869 in Munich, where it was first exhibited publicly, and copied it there. After Francis Jowell Courbet added the dating probably an allusion to the ever endless debate among art historians about the exact dating of an image to another. Than ironic homage to Thoré, with whom he was a friend and who died a few months before the show

After a rumor he is supposed to have the original image in the exhibition exchanged several days by his copy, and thus deceived the public; this story is classified by Slive and others as unlikely. Carl von Lützow dealt intensively with the 1870 Malle Babbe and also commented critically on the copy of Courbet. According to him, the copy lacked the bright tone quality and the colors are muted, making the stunning vibrancy of facial expression would be reduced.

Copies of North American artists

General attention in America for the works of Frans Hals by the Munich School under Wilhelm Leibl and attention, the neck at the time by the realists and later received by the Impressionists. William Merritt Chase as the main representative, many American artists of the time made ​​pilgrimages to the Frans Hals Museum Haarlem, and there was a lively trade in copies and reproductions in America.

The most famous American copy of Malle Babbe is by Frank Duveneck, who had studied in the period 1870-1873 at Leibl in Munich and was one of the early representatives of the American Impressionism. He made ​​a copy of the New York Malle Babbe on, in the conviction that it is an original by Frans Hals. His version is smaller than the original and created with a very broad brush strokes. His painting is now in a private collection, the repository is unknown; it was last shown in 1967 in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor with the title Triumph of Realism. An Exhibition of European and American Realist Paintings 1850-1910, where it was provided by the ACA Heritage Gallery, New York, is available.

Copies without immediate reference to Frans Hals

The Dresden Art Gallery has a painting entitled Hille Bobbe and smoking, which is often attributed to Frans Hals the Younger. It is a pastiche in the form of an image mosaic from the New York Malle Babbe, the painting The Smoker by Joos van Craesbeeck (formerly Adriaen Brouwer assigned ), as well as a fish still life in the style of Abraham van Beijeren. As with the New York Malle Babbe also the authorship of Frans Hals is the younger now rejected, the true painter is unknown. Also unknown is the painter of the picture Malle Babbe and the drinker, in which Malle Babbe is represented as a fishwife together with a drinker no longer traceable origin. Slive makes the case that the drinker could be taken from a picture by Frans Hals apprentice and later son Pieter Roestraten or the Haarlem genre painter Peter Staverenus.

Two other portraits which also Frans Hals were attributed to the 19th century, are mentioned in connection with the Malle Babbe regularly. It is the located in Lille, Musée des Beaux -Arts Crazy Woman ( Seated Woman ) and formerly the New York private collection of Jack Linsky located Crazy woman with jug ( Seated Woman holding a jug ). Both are created today is not as clearly by Frans Hals and considered in comparison to the real Malle Babbe and the New York version as very weak.

Malle Babbe and the drinker

Crazy woman

Crazy woman with jug

Han van Meegeren

Even in the case of the art forger Han van Meegeren, who was known for his forgeries of paintings of Jan Vermeer, the malls Babbe played a role. This was the beginning of his work created four paintings, including a portrait of a woman drinking after Malle Babbe of Frans Hals. His version is a laughing Malle Babbe without owl represents who raised the mug keeps happening. He signed the picture right below the contracted Monogram Frans Hals'.

These early paintings he sold not as original works for unknown reasons. The Portrait of a woman drinking in 1945 seized in his studio and in 1947 handed over to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for storage.

Provenance

The earliest history of the image is unknown. A first documented sale, probably the malls Babbe concerns is documented for 1 October 1778 in Amsterdam, where the image of nine florins to a buyer named Altrogge went. Also the next sale in Nijmegen on June 10, 1812 is not assured. On May 12, 1834, the image of nine florins of JF was Sigault and J. J. van Limbeek sold and subsequently went into the collection of Stokbroo van Hoogwood s Aartwoud. On September 3, 1867 bought Bartholdt Suermondt, an industrialist and collector of Aachen, the image at the Stockbroo auction in Hoorn for 1660 guilders. In 1869, he presented it for the first time publicly in Munich, where it was seen among many others, by Gustave Courbet.

In 1873, an exhibition in Brussels and in 1874 sold Suermondt a large part of his collection, including Malle Babbe for about one million gold marks to the Royal Museums in Berlin, today's Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, then under the leadership of Julius Meyer and Wilhelm von Bode as its assistant stand. The image is still owned by the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, and is shown in the Cultural Forum in Berlin in the permanent exhibition.

In addition to the permanent exhibition in Berlin was shown the malls Babbe 1873 in Brussels, in 1950 in Amsterdam and Haarlem in 1962. 1989 and 1990 the picture was part of a joint exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.

Documents

Cited evidence

The information in this article originate for the most part the limits given in literature sources, in addition, the following sources are cited: