Judith Leyster

After her death Leyster completely disappeared from art history until the end of the 19th century, when the distinctive monogram – JL and a star shooting out to the right – on A Lute Player and five other paintings was identified as hers.

Her father gave a house he had purchased in Haarlem in 1601 the name De Leystar (lodestar or comet), and later adopted it as his own surname.

Leyster’s earliest signed and dated paintings, The Jolly Drinker and The Serenade, both from 1629 are part of the Rijksmuseum’s collection.

After her rediscovery, scholars attributed a number of works formerly thought to be by Frans Hals to her, including this copy of his famous Lute Player in the Louvre. The attribution to Leyster cannot be confirmed.

The genre of the half-length single-figure musician originated in the northern Netherlands in Utrecht with the followers of the Italian artist Caravaggio who worked there. An example is Gerard van Honthorst’s The Merry Fiddler from 1623.

Two of the things that make Leyster’s The Serenade so remarkable are the lighting emanating from a hidden source and the daring perspective. We look at the musician from below, as if we too are looking up at his beloved whom he is serenading.

Paintings like A Fool Holding a Jug, known as The Jolly Drinker, were direct challenges to Frans Hals, who specialized in the depiction of comic figures clad in outlandish colourful costumes.

Leyster joined the Haarlem painters’ guild in 1633 and two years later was embroiled in a dispute with Frans Hals over a pupil, Willem Woutersz, who had left her studio after only a few days to join his. Leyster received only partial compensation, and was also fined for failing to report this pupil to the guild in the first place.

At age 26, Leyster married fellow artist Jan Miense Molenaer, who was also 26 years old, in 1636. The couple lived in Amsterdam, Heemstede and Haarlem, and had at least 5 children, only two of which survived infancy.

The only certain work by Leyster dated after her wedding is a drawing of a tulip from 1643. Her husband, on the other hand, remained active as a painter almost until the end of his life.