Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster
Self-Portrait (c. 1633)
Born	c. July 28, 1609 Haarlem
Died	February 10, 1660(1660-02-10) (aged 50) Heemstede
Nationality	Dutch
Known for	Painting
Notable work	The Proposition, 1631

Judith Jans Leyster (also Leijster) (c. July 28, 1609^[1]– February 10, 1660) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Leyster painted genre works, portraits, and still lifes. Her entire oeuvre was attributed to Frans Hals until 1893, when Hofstede de Groot first attributed seven paintings to her, six of which are signed with her distinctive monogram 'JL*'.^[2]

Biography

Leyster was born in Haarlem^[3] as the eighth child of Jan Willemsz Leyster, a local brewer and clothmaker. While the details of her training are uncertain, she was already well enough known in 1628 to be mentioned in a Dutch book by Samuel Ampzing titled Beschrijvinge ende lof der stadt Haerlem.

The Happy Couple by Leyster, 1630 (Louvre)

There is some speculation that Leyster pursued a career in painting as a result of her father's bankruptcy and the need to bring in funds for the family. She may have learned painting from Frans Pietersz de Grebber,^[4] who was running a respected workshop in Haarlem in the 1620s.^[5] During this time her family moved to the province of Utrecht and she may have come in contact with Utrecht Caravaggisti.^[1]

Her first known signed work is dated 1629, four years before entering the artist's guild.^[6] By 1633, she was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, the second female painter to be registered there. The first woman registered was Sara van Baalbergen in 1631, who like Leyster, was not a member of an established artist family in Haarlem, and she also married another painter; Barent van Eysen. There were more women active at that time as painters in Haarlem, but since they worked in family workshops they did not need the professional qualifications necessary to be able to sign works or run a workshop.)^[7]

Her Self-Portrait, c. 1633 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), has been proposed as her presentation piece to the Guild. This self-portrait historically marks a shift from the rigidity of earlier women's self-portraits in favor of a more relaxed, dynamic pose.^[8][9] Indeed, it is very relaxed by the standards of any Dutch portrait, comparable mainly with some by Hals. However it seems unlikely that in reality she wore such formal clothes when painting in oils, especially the very wide lace collar.

Within two years of her entry into the guild, Leyster had taken on three male apprentices. Records show that Leyster sued Frans Hals for accepting one of her students who left her workshop for that of Hals, less than three days after the student entered the studio. The student's mother paid Leyster four guilders in punitive damages, only half of what Leyster asked for, and, instead of returning her apprentice, Hals settled the argument by paying a three-guilder fine. Leyster was fined herself for not having registered the apprentice with the Guild.^[1]

In 1636, Leyster married Jan Miense Molenaer, a more prolific artist of similar subjects. In hopes of better economic prospects, they moved to Amsterdam, where he had existing clients. They remained there for eleven years before returning to the Haarlem area (in Heemstede). In Heemstede they shared a studio in a small house located on the grounds of the present day Groenendaal park. Leyster and Molenaer had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood.

Most of Leyster's dated works are from 1629–1635, which coincides with the period before she married and had children. There are few known pieces painted after 1635: two illustrations in a book about tulips from 1643, a portrait from 1652, and a still life from 1654 that was recently discovered in a private collection.^[10] Leyster may have worked collaboratively with her husband as well.^[1] In 1660 Leyster died aged 50.

Serenade by Leyster, 1629 (Rijksmuseum)

Work

She signed her works with a monogram with her initials JL with a star attached. This was a play on words; "Lei-ster" meant "Lead star" in Dutch, which was the common name for the North star used at the time by Dutch mariners. The Leistar was the name of her father's brewery in Haarlem.^[6] (Only occasionally did she sign her works with her full name.)

She specialized in portrait-like genre scenes of, typically, one to three figures, who generally exude good cheer, and are shown against a plain background. Many are children; others men with drink. Leyster was particularly innovative in her domestic genre scenes. In them, she creates quiet scenes of women at home, often with candle- or lamplight, particularly from a woman's point of view.^[11] The The Proposition (Mauritshuis) is an unusual variant on this common scene, appearing to show a girl receiving unwelcome advances, instead of the usual depiction with a willing prostitute. However this interpretation is not universally accepted.^[12]

Much of her other work, especially in music-makers, was similar in nature to that of many of her contemporaries, such as her husband, the Hals brothers, Jan Steen, and the Utrecht Caravaggisti Hendrick Terbrugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst; their genre paintings, generally of taverns and other scenes of entertainment, catered to the tastes and interests of a growing segment of the Dutch middle class. She painted a few actual portraits, and her only known history painting is David with the head of Goliath, which does not depart from her typical style, with a single figure close to the front of the picture space.

Leyster and Frans Hals

Although well-known during her lifetime and esteemed by her contemporaries, Leyster and her work became largely forgotten after her death. Leyster's rediscovery came in 1893, when it emerged that a painting admired for over a century as a work of Frans Hals had actually been painted by Leyster.

The confusion (or perhaps deceit) dates back to Leyster's lifetime. Sir Luke Schaud acquired a Leyster, The Jolly Companions, as a Hals in the 1600s. The work ended up with a dealer, Wertheimer of Bond Street, London, who described it as one of the finest [Hals] paintings.^[13] Sir John Millars agreed with the Wertheimer about the authenticity and value of the painting. Wertheimer sold the painting to an English firm for £4,500. This firm in turn sold the painting to Baron Schlichting in Paris as a Hals.

In 1893 the Louvre found Leyster's monogram under the fabricated signature of "Frans Hals".^[14] It is not clear when the false signature had been added. When the original signature was discovered, Baron Schlichting sued the English firm, who in turn attempted to rescind their own purchase and get their money back from the art dealer, Wertheimer. The case was settled in court on May 31, 1893, with the paintiffs (the unnamed English firm) agreeing to keep the painting for £3,500 + £500 costs. During the legal proceedings, there was no consideration for the work as an object of value under its new history: "at no time did anyone throw his cap in the air and rejoice that another painter, capable of equalling Hals at his best, had been discovered".^[13] Another version of The Jolly Companions was sold in Brussels in 1890, and bore Leyster's monogram "crudely altered to an interlocking FH".^[13]

In 1893 Cornelis Hofstede de Groot wrote the first article on Leyster.^[15] Art historians since that period have often dismissed her as an imitator or follower of Hals, although this attitude has changed somewhat in the last few years.^[16]

Apart from the lawsuit mentioned above, the nature of Leyster's professional relationship with Hals is unclear; she may have been his student or else a friendly colleague. She may have been a witness at the baptism of Hals' daughter Maria in the early 1630s, since a "Judith Jansder" (meaning "daughter of Jan") was recorded as such, but there were other Judith Janses in Haarlem. Some historians have asserted that Hals — or his brother Dirck Hals — may have been Leyster's teacher due to the close similarity between their work.^[1]

Public collections

Museums holding works by Judith Leyster include the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam;^[17] the Mauritshuis, The Hague; the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; the Louvre, Paris; the National Gallery, London; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Gallery

• 
  Kannekijker (A Youth with a Jug) (1633)
• 
  Portrait of a Man
• 
  A Game of Tric Trac
• 
  A Game Of Cards
• 
  Young Flute Player
• 
  A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel
• 
  The Concert (1631–33)
• 
  The Proposition (1631)
• 
  Jolly Toper (1629)
• 
  Merry Trio (between 1629 and 1631)
• 
  Blompotje (Flowers in a Vase) (1654)
• 
  The Jester, after Frans Hals

See also

• Maria de Grebber
• List of paintings by Judith Leyster
• List of paintings by Frans Hals

References

• Chadwick, Whitney, Women, Art, and Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990.
• "Leyster, Judith" in Gaze, Delia, ed. Dictionary of Women Artists. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
• Welu, James A. and Pieter Biesboer. Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, Yale University, 1993.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Judith Leyster.

• Artist Profile at Artcyclopedia
• Works and literature on Judith Leyster
• Judith Leyster's Cat Paintings