The Gypsy Girl (Hals)

Frans Hals · 1626

The story

The Gypsy Girl, also known as Gypsy Girl or Young Woman (La Bohémienne) (and sometimes erroneously referred to as Malle Babbe) is an oil-on-wood painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1628–1630, and now in the Louvre Museum, in Paris. It is a tronie, a study of facial expression and unusual costume, rather than a commissioned portrait.

The display of cleavage was not a common feature of costume seen in public in Hals' time and place. For this reason various art historians have assumed a painting of a prostitute was intended. From the 19th century the Louvre titled the painting La Bohémienne, meaning a female gypsy, but there is no reason to assume the model was Romani.

Artist

Frans Hals

Date

1626

Collection

Louvre, Paris, France

Medium

oil paint, panel

Size

58 × 52 cm

Story adapted from the Wikipedia article and its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

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