Judith Leyster - Biography

Biography

Leyster was born in Haarlem as the eighth child of Jan Willemsz Leyster, a local brewer and clothmaker. While the details of her training are uncertain, in her teens she was well enough known to be mentioned in a Dutch book by Samuel Ampzing titled Beschrijvinge ende lof der stadt Haerlem, originally written in 1621, revised in 1626-27, and published in 1628.

She learned to paint from Frans Pietersz de Grebber, who was running a respected workshop in Haarlem in the 1620s. Her first known signed work is dated 1629, four years before entering the artist's guild. By 1633, she was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, the second woman to be registered there (the first women 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. The most notable example of this in Leyster's case was Maria de Grebber, the sister of Pieter de Grebber, who was 7 years older than Leyster and already active as a painter in her father's workshop in 1628. She possibly studied with Leyster as a pupil of her father, and her daughter Isabelle later married the painter Gabriel Metsu. Within two years of her entry into the guild, Leyster had taken on three male apprentices. Records show that Leyster sued Frans Hals for stealing one of her students who had left her workshop for that of Hals, not three days after he arrived. The student's mother paid Leyster 4 guilders in punitive damages, only half of what Leyster asked for, and, instead of returning her apprentice, Hals settled the due by paying a 3-guilder fine. Leyster was also fined for not having registered the apprentice with the Guild.

In 1636, Leyster married Jan Miense Molenaer, a more prolific, though less talented, artist of similar subjects. In hopes of better economic prospects, they moved to Amsterdam, where the art market was far more stable. They remained there for eleven years; they had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. They eventually moved to Heemstede where in 1660 Leyster died at the age of 50. In Heemstede they had shared a studio in a small house that no longer exists, but was located on the grounds of the present-day Groenendaal park.

Most of Leyster's dated works are from 1629–1635, which coincides with the period before she had children. There are only two known pieces painted after 1635; two illustrations in a book about tulips from 1643 and a portrait from 1652. Only about a dozen works are generally attributed to her.

Although well known during her lifetime and esteemed by her contemporaries, Leyster and her work were largely forgotten after her death. Leyster's rediscovery came in 1893. The Louvre had purchased a Frans Hals only to find it had in fact been painted by Judith Leyster. A dealer had changed the monogram that she used as a signature. 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.