Judith Leyster of Haarlem was a Dutch 17th-century artist. There were only a few female artists at that time, and she is the most famous. She was the first woman to be given the title of ‘master painter’ by the painters’ guild. This meant that, like male artists, she could set up her own studio, train students and even sell her paintings.
Other female artists mainly painted still lifes, but Leyster was more ambitious. She liked to paint modern ‘genre paintings’, which showed household scenes. She did not paint them with fine details, but with a ‘loose’ technique. This was unusual, and Leyster was the only Dutch female artist who worked in this way at the time.
Life in Haarlem
By the age of twenty Leyster was a skilled painter and a local celebrity. She might have learned to paint at the studio of Frans de Grebber (1573-1649). Although Leyster was talented and ambitious, only a few dozen paintings by her exist today. In 1636 she married painter Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610-1668). They had five children, but only two lived to become adults.
After her death Leyster was forgotten, until she was ‘rediscovered’ in 1893 by art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930). He recognised her monogram on seven paintings. Today, Leyster is seen as one of the most important Dutch painters of the 1630s.
Lively brushwork
Leyster’s loose brushstrokes can be seen clearly in her paintings. Producing a lifelike image using this technique is difficult, but Leyster did it perfectly. Interestingly, she also used the same kind of brushwork in her still lifes, as well as in her figure paintings. Usually painters would choose a more refined technique for still lifes.
Leyster’s loose brushwork is similar to that of Frans Hals (1582/83-1666), who lived and worked in Haarlem at the same time. He also had a ‘rough’ painting style. Even during her lifetime, Leyster’s paintings were sometimes mistaken for work by Hals. For many years people thought she must have been trained by Hals, but there is no evidence of this.
Light and dark
Leyster often used exciting light effects and sharp contrasts between light and dark in her paintings. This was fashionable in the 1630s, and many other artists did the same thing, including Rembrandt (1606-1669) and the Utrecht Caravaggisti, who worked in the style of Caravaggio. Unusually, Leyster sometimes filled half the picture with shadows. She also allowed faces to disappear almost completely into the darkness.
