Malle Babbe

Hals's Malle Babbe (c. 1633) at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin depicts a notorious Haarlem woman known as 'Crazy Babbe' — an inn-keeper who was committed to the city's lunatic asylum. The subject, holding an enormous tankard and with an owl perched on her shoulder, is painted with extraordinary painterly freedom and psychological intensity. The owl — a traditional symbol of foolishness or drunkenness — combines with the tankard and the figure's uninhibited expression to create an image of unrestrained excess that is simultaneously comic and disturbing. Hals's ability to render the specific quality of uncontrolled laughter and mental agitation through his rapid, slashing brushwork makes Malle Babbe one of the most vivid character studies in seventeenth-century painting.

Hals's brushwork reaches extraordinary freedom here, with slashing diagonal strokes defining the woman's collar and cap with almost abstract energy. The paint is applied with remarkable speed and confidence, capturing the wild grin and gleaming eyes with an immediacy that anticipates Expressionist portraiture by centuries.