Title
© DVN, een project van Huygens ING en OGC (UU). Bronvermelding: Kloek Els, en, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. URL: http://www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/DVN/lemmata/en [06/10/2011]
LEYSTER, Judith (baptised Haarlem, 28 July 1609 – buried Heemstede 10 February 1660), painter. Daughter of Jan Willemsz Leyster (died after 30 March 1642), weaver and brewer, and Trijn Jaspersdr (died after 2 June 1648). Judith Leyster married Jan Miense Molenaer (1610-1668), painter, on 1 June 1636 in Heemstede. The couple had at least 5 children, of whom 1 daughter and 1 son survived infancy.
Judith Leyster was the second youngest child in a family with mostly female offspring: of the nine children of Jan Willemsz Leyster and Trijn Jaspersdr who were baptised – seven daughters and two sons – three probably died young. Judith thus grew up with four older sisters and one younger brother. Her father, who came from Antwerp, had joined the Reformed Church in Haarlem in 1592. Two years later he married Trijn Jaspersdr of Haarlem. The name ‘Leystar’ is first recorded in 1603, as the sign of the house in Franckenstraat which the family occupied from that year on – the very house in which Judith was born in 1609. It was long thought that Judith Leyster’s father was a brewer, but this is only partly correct. When he settled in Haarlem, he stated that he was a weaver by trade. From 1600 he was also active in the Haarlem housing market; in 1618 he bought a brewery on the Bakenessergracht which he also called the ‘Leystar’. In 1624 he was forced to declare bankruptcy, at which time he and his wife left the city and settled in Vreeland (near Utrecht). It is not known if Judith went with them.
The question as to how Judith Leyster could have developed into a professional painter with a background like this has never been answered satisfactorily. The fact that Ampzing, the Haarlem city historian, mentioned her in 1628 – she was just nineteen at the time – in the same breath as members of the painters’ family of De Grebber, including their daughter Maria, suggests that she was trained by De Grebber. She might have started out as a painter of the patterned fabrics her father produced as a weaver. After all, Frans Pietersz de Grebber had been praised by Van Mander for his embroidery patterns. However, Judith Leyster’s style and choice of subject matter make it very likely that she also studied with Frans Hals. Her earliest signed works – The Serenade and The Merry Drinker, both dating from 1629 – are clearly related to the work of Hals. No direct link has ever been found, though, unless Judith Jans, who in 1631 witnessed the baptism of one of Hals’s daughters, was in fact Judith Leyster.
In 1633, 24-year-old Judith Leyster enrolled as a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke. Her self-portrait, which also dates from that year, was probably her ‘masterpiece’, presented upon admission to the guild. She opened her own painter’s shop in Korte Barteljorisstraat, and in 1635 lodged a complaint with the dean of the guild because one of her apprentices had run off to join the studio of Frans Hals. We therefore know that she had a workshop with pupils. The documents referring to this conflict mention several pupils and a servant. Judith Leyster was thus an unmarried woman operating independently as a painter and running her own studio with her own assistants.
Judith Leyster mainly painted genre scenes of modest size, often with a single figure, though sometimes with several, containing little or no elaboration of the setting. This makes her work similar to that of Dirck Hals, the younger brother of Frans. Because of her lighting effects – she was fond of using an indirect source of light – her work often gives an impression of intimacy. Most of her works were probably painted for the art market, rather than for patrons; evidently there was a demand in this period for genre scenes that were not too large. However, she did not confine herself to such themes, for she also painted a still life, a portrait of a woman, and a watercolour of a tulip. Evidently she could turn her hand to many subjects, and her self-portrait can therefore be seen as the visiting card of a skilled and versatile painter, who portrayed herself as Pictura at her easel, with a great many brushes in her hand, thereby demonstrating that she could paint both portraits and genre scenes. She signed most of her works with a remarkably self-assured monogram: JL, decorated with a guiding star (‘leid-ster’), playfully alluding to her name. Most of her oeuvre – only eighteen works can be attributed to her with certainty – originated between 1628 and 1635: in other words, from the time before her marriage.
Marriage
In 1636 Judith Leyster married Jan Miense Molenaer, the son of a Haarlem tailor and himself a painter. She had probably known him as a youngster, for he grew up in the house behind her father’s brewery (Broerse, 21). Molenaer, too, is thought to have been a pupil of Frans Hals, although there is no direct proof of this either. Because research has shown that, around 1629, they were using the same studio props, it is sometimes assumed that Judith Leyster and Jan Miense Molenaer were already sharing a workshop before their marriage and even that Molenaer was the servant mentioned in the documents recording Leyster’s conflict with Hals.
Not long after their marriage, the couple moved to Amsterdam, where they lived in Gasthuismolensteeg and later in Dubbeldeworststeeg. Their children Joannes (1637), Jacobus (1639), Helena (1643) and Eva (1646) were all baptised in Amsterdam. Around 1648 the family moved back to Haarlem, where their youngest son, Constantijn, was baptised in 1651. In that year Judith Leyster is recorded as living in Kleine Houtstraat. Jan Miense Molenaer had a workshop with pupils, and was active both as an art dealer and in the housing market. In fact, the couple owned a farm in Heemstede worth 8,200 guilders, paid for in part with paintings, and had invested money in houses in Haarlem and Amsterdam, so evidently Molenaer and Leyster were well-off. When Judith Leyster’s name appears in documents dating from these years, it is always as a proxy or a bookkeeper. In 1657, when she was required to appear before the magistrates of Heemstede in a case involving a creditor, she showed up ‘holding her register in her hand’ (quoted by Broersen in Welu, 30).
The only work by Judith Leyster known from the period after her marriage is the tulip watercolour ‘the early Brabantsson’ (1643). It is assumed by some (Harms, Hofrichter) that she gave up painting in order to care for her family, whereas others (including Broersen) think it more likely that she continued to work in her husband’s studio – she was, after all, a skilled and versatile painter – and also participated in his art dealings.
In the autumn of 1659, Judith Leyster and her husband were both so ill that they had their wills drawn up at their farm on 6 November. Judith Leyster died three months later, leaving Jan Miense Molenaer with their two surviving children. He survived his wife by more than eight years.
Reputation
During her lifetime, Judith Leyster was praised by the Haarlem city historian Ampzing (see above), as well as by Theodorus Schrevelius (1648), who called her ‘the true guiding star of art’. Even so, after her death she soon faded into oblivion. The inventory of their estate, drawn up after the death of Jan Miense Molenaer, contains no paintings by ‘Judith Leyster’, but it does list several by ‘Miss Molenaer’. This suggests that she signed her works differently after marrying; if so, it may have kept her from wider recognition. The monogram she used before her marriage was perhaps forgotten or misread. Her work is often taken for that of Frans Hals, or even for that of a less-known brother called Jan Hals, which would explain the unmistakable J. It was not until after the sale of The Serenade in 1892 – at which time doubt was cast on the work’s attribution to Frans Hals, and, when a lawsuit ensued, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot succeeded in explaining the monogram – that Judith Leyster was rediscovered. She is now considered one of the best-known female artists of the Dutch Golden Age, and – thanks to her self-portrait – as a paragon of the assertiveness of the women of that time. In 1993 a large exhibition of her work was held in the Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem and the Worcester Museum of Art in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Reference work(s)
Van der Aa; DWA; Elck zijn waerom; Lexicon Noord-Nederlandse kunstenaressen; Immerzeel; Regt; Wurzbach.
Archives
The most comprehensive list of archival sources in Ellen Broersen’s contribution to the 1993 catalogue.
Works
For a survey of Leyster’s works, see Frima Fox Hofrichter (nrs.1-48), and the 1993 catalogue (nrs. 1-18).
Bibliography
- Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, ‘Judith Leyster’, Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 14 (1893) 190-198 and 232.
- Juliane Harms, ‘Judith Leyster, ihr Leben und ihr Werk’, Oud-Holland 44 (1927) 88-96, 112-126, 145-154, 221-242 and 275-279.
- Frima Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster. A woman painter in Holland’s Golden Age (Doornspijk 1989).
- James E. Welu and Pieter Biesboer ed., Judith Leyster. Schilderes in een mannenwereld. Exhibition catalogue Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem and Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts (Zwolle/Haarlem 1993) [also published in English under the title Judith Leyster. A Dutch master and her world. On Leyster’s life see the contribution by Ellen Broersen].
Illustration
Zelfportret, c. 1630. From: Welu and Biesboer ed., Judith Leyster (1993).
Author: Els Kloek
last updated: 06/10/2011