Malle Babbe

Faking Vermeer meant faking stillness. Faking Frans Hals meant the opposite. Where Vermeer built up smooth, patient surfaces, Hals worked fast and rough, catching a laugh or a shout in a few slashing strokes. Han van Meegeren tried his hand at that too. This is his version of Hals's Malle Babbe, or mad Babbe, a real woman from Haarlem whom Hals had painted around 1633 as a wild-eyed tavern figure with an owl on her shoulder. Van Meegeren made his quick, loose copy in the mid-1930s, proof that his forgery ran well beyond Vermeer's quiet light. He never sold it, and after the scandal broke it passed to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.