La Bohémienne (The Gypsy Girl)

About this work

Artist

Frans Hals (1582–1666)

Year

c. 1626

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

58 × 52 cm

Collection

Musée du Louvre, Paris

Movement

Dutch Golden Age

A laughing young woman in a red bodice and a loose white chemise, her brown hair falling to her shoulders, looks down and to the right as if answering someone outside the picture. Hals painted her on a panel around 1626, during a short phase when his palette was light and his subjects close to the Utrecht followers of Caravaggio. It is a tronie, a character study rather than a commission, and the open neckline marks her as a courtesan; under raking light one can see that Hals first painted a more modest décolletage and then revised it. The Louvre has called her La Bohémienne since the picture arrived there in 1869 with the bequest of Louis La Caze, though there is no reason to think the model was Romani. In 1975 a Dutch song inspired by her, mistakenly titled Malle Babbe after another Hals, became a hit for Rob de Nijs.

This exhibition-poster edition shows the whole work beneath original typography set in-house. The original is in the public domain.