Judith Leyster

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Self-Portrait (1630)
National Gallery of Art
Washington DC

Judith Leyster (* 1609 in Haarlem , † 1660 in Heemstede ) was a Dutch painter of the 17th century . She is considered one of the few painters of the Golden Age whose work has survived to this day. Her work is assigned to the baroque .

Life

Judith Jans Leyster was born as the eighth of nine children of Trijn Jasperdr and Jan Willensz Leyster in Haarlem and baptized on July 28, 1609. Her father worked as a cloth maker and owned the “De Leystarre” brewery in the Bakenessergracht (from which it took its name), but had to declare bankruptcy in 1624.

Leyster received her artistic training from the painter and etcher Pieter Fransz de Grebber , who was known for historical and portrait pictures.

In connection with the de Grebber family, Leyster's work as an active artistically active woman is highlighted by Samuel Ampzing in his Beschrijvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland (description and praise of the city of Haarlem in Holland), which was edited from 1626 to 1627 . In 1628 the family moved to Vreeland near Utrecht , where the painter may have had contact with the Utrecht Caravaggists Hendrick Terbrugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst . In September 1629 her parents moved to Zaandam near Amsterdam , although there is no evidence of how long the artist stayed with her parents before she returned to Haarlem. Her presence as godmother at the baptism of Frans Hals' daughter Maria in November 1631 is documented.

On June 1, 1636, Judith Leyster married the painter Jan Miense Molenaer in Heemstede. In this marriage, the children Johannus (1637), Jacobus (1639), Helena (1643), Eva (1646) and Constantijn (1650) were born. The couple initially lived in Amsterdam before buying a house in Heemstede in 1648. Few works by Judith Leysters are known from the time after the wedding. On the one hand, the artist took care of her family and the household; on the other hand, she shared models and props with her husband, and both worked on each other's pictures, which today makes clear attributions difficult. Judith Leyster died in Heemstede and was buried there on February 10, 1660.

plant

Judith Leyster began to sign and date her pictures as early as 1629. She had her own studio and in 1633 became one of only two female members of the St. Luke guild . Much of Judith Leyster's work shows the influence of Frans Hals, and it has long been suggested that she was his student. However, recent research sees a stronger connection to the pictures by Dirck Hals . In 1635 Judith Leyster had three students. One - Willem Wouters - moved to Frans Hals' studio without permission after their wedding. Judith Leyster then sued the pupil's mother in front of the St. Lukas Guild for payment of the school fee of eight guilders, half of which was awarded to her. Frans Hals then refunded her a further three guilders.

Judith Leyster's work includes portraits, still lifes, allegories, botanical drawings and at least one etching. Most striking, however, are her genre paintings , in which she depicts subjects of everyday life in small, intimate, candle-lit scenes. Her pictures usually feature one or two people, with children among her preferred models. Her motifs are boys who play the flute, lute or violin, mothers who sew or comb their children's hair, men who seduce women, cardsharps or backgammon players and party people in inns.

Theodorus Schrevelius in his book about Haarlem (1647): “There are also many women who are experienced in painting and are still famous today, who can also take on men, of whom Judith Leyster is mentioned above all, a real guiding star in art, from which she also bears the name, the housewife of Molenaer, who is also a famous painter, was born in Haarlem and known in Amsterdam. "

Rediscovery

Although Judith Leyster's contemporaries held her work in high esteem, the painter and her work were forgotten for a long time. Her pictures were thought to have been lost or were attributed to Frans Hals. It was not until 1893 that the Louvre discovered the monogram of Judith Leyster in a picture under the false signature of Frans Hals, and in the same year a first scientific article on Leyster's work was published. In the meantime, 48 works are considered authentic works by the artist and twelve more have come down to us from descriptions from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1993 the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem and the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts jointly showed the first retrospective of Judith Leyster's work. In 2009/10 the Frans Hals Museum dedicated the solo exhibition Judith Leyster - De eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd to her .

In December 2016, a late self-portrait of Judith Leyster was discovered in a British country house. In the picture from 1653, the artist shows herself again painting, this time as an elderly married woman in muted clothes. The self-portrait was bought at Christie's auction house for half a million pounds at the end of December 2016 by an unknown buyer.

Her work can be found in the following collections:

gallery

  • Head of a child / girl with a straw hat (1630–1640)
    Accademia Carrara
    Bergamo

  • The Concert (1631–1633)
    National Museum of Women in the Arts
    Washington DC

  • Funny company (1630)
    Musée du Louvre
    Paris

  • The Tric-Trac Game (1630)
    Worcester Art Museum
    Worcester, MA

  • Boy and Girl with Cat and Eel (circa 1635)
    National Gallery of
    London

  • The funny reveler (1629)
    State museums - Gemäldegalerie
    Berlin

  • Serenade (1629)
    Rijksmuseum
    Amsterdam

  • Young flute player (c. 1635) Stockholm
    National Museum

  • Self-portrait by Judith Leyster (around 1653), auctioned in December 2016

literature

  • Pieter Biesboer: Frans Hals and Haarlem's Masters of the Golden Age. Hirmer Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-6005-5
  • Whitney Chadwick: Women, Art, and Society. Thames and Hudson, London 1997, ISBN 978-0500202937
  • Christina Haberlik , Ira Diana Mazzoni : 50 classics - artists, painters, sculptors and photographers . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2002, ISBN 978-3-8067-2532-2 , pp. 30-35
  • Juliane Harms: Judith Leyster: Her life and her work , 1927 (several articles in Oud Holland - Quarterly for Dutch Art History ), ISSN 0030-672X
  • Fox Court Judge: Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland's Golden Age. Doornspijk 1989, ISBN 90-70288-62-1
  • Cornelis Hofstede de Groot : Judith Leyster . In: Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections, Vol. 14 (1893), pp. 190–198, 232, ISSN 0934-618X
  • Debra N. Mancoff: Women who changed art Prestel Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3791347325 , pp. 22-23
  • Anna Tummers: Judith Leyster: de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd [catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem], Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum, 2009
  • Jordi Vigué: Great Women Masters of Art. Watson-Guptill, 2003, ISBN 978-0823021147
  • Christiane Weidemann, Petra Larass, Melanie Klier: 50 women artists you should know Prestel Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7913-3957-3 , pp. 28–32
  • James A. Welu, Pieter Biesboer: Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World. Yale Univ. Press, 1993, ISBN 0-300-05564-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christina Haberlik , Ira Diana Mazzoni : 50 Classics - Artists, Painters, Sculptors and Photographers . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2002, ISBN 978-3-8067-2532-2 , p. 34.
  2. ↑ Cornelis Hofstede de Groot : Judith Leyster . In: Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections, Vol. 14 (1893), pp. 190–198, 232, ISSN 0934-618X.
  3. ↑ http://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/archief/ Archive exhibitions Frans Hals Museum, accessed on July 9, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Judith Leyster  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Leyster, Judith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leyster, Judith Jans; Leijster, Judith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch Baroque painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1609
PLACE OF BIRTH Haarlem
DATE OF DEATH 1660
Place of death Heemstede