Judith Leyster and Art Historians Who Intentionally Misattribute Women's Artworks To Men Because They Believe Women Are Incapable of Creating Anything Great and Want To Make More Money

When you hear the term 'Dutch Golden Age’ you likely think of the many great paintings that have been used as the cornerstones of the period’s canon, such as Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) and The Night Watch (1642) or Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (1657-58) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665), but it wasn’t until the late 19th century that one of the periods great painters emerged from obscurity and had their impact acknowledged. Like many great women artists, 17th century Dutch Golden Age painter, Judith Leyster (1609-60) was highly regarded during her lifetime but quickly forgotten, and even purposefully erased, after her death. 

Figure 1: Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait (1630)

Leyster, in so far as is known, was the first woman in Western art history to have been officially recognised as a ‘master painter’ by a painters’ guild when she joined the Guild of St. Luke in 1633, at just 24 years old, where she was the only female artist amongst more than 30 members. Three years later, in 1636, she married fellow artist Jan Miense Molenaer (1610-68) and, thereafter, her artistic development slowed almost to a halt and focus turned to still lifes and florals, of which she produced very few before her death in 1660. Despite the brevity of her career, Leyster’s work shows a mastery over a variety of techniques including foreshortening and chiaroscuro which she used to breathe life into her subjects and to create ephemeral works that freeze a single, unassuming moment into her canvas. Her experimentations with these and other techniques results in highly innovative effects of light that can be seen in her nocturnal scenes, such as The Last Drop (1629), wherein she also displays her talent for conveying complex narratives. 

Figure 2: Judith Leyster, The Last Drop (1629)

Here, we read a narrative of life and death through the three figures huddled together – the first is standing with a cigarette in one hand and an empty cup tipped upside down in the other, he looks at the viewer, slightly smiling, as if to welcome them into the scene. The second figure sits on a stool tilting their head back and draining what is left of their drink. These two figures convey the ‘life’ portion of the narrative, but it is in the third and final figure, a skeleton, that death becomes involved and the image takes a darker turn. Standing behind the seated man, gazing at him while he finishes a drink, death looms above waiting patiently to collect. In its hands the skeleton holds an hourglass above the drinker’s head, directly above his eyes, with a skull and lit match in the other hand that is in line with the drinker’s chest and heart. Leyster conveys not only that death is looming, but, in holding the only light source in the image, she narrates the final moments of the drinker’s life – once he finishes what is left in the bottle, the hourglass will have ran through, his time will be up and death with blow out the match, taking the light and the drinker’s life.  

The canon’s account of Leyster’s professional life is that she apprenticed under Frans Pietersz de Grebber (1573-1649) before working closely with her husband and the artist Frans Hals, but she achieved relatively little artistic success on her own accord and had little-to-no impact on art history. In fact, it is unknown where and with whom Leyster studied or when she started painting, although her work was first recognised in Samuel Ampzing's Beschrijvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland (Description and Praise of the City of Haarlem in Holland) where he referred to her as being “one who painted with a good, keen sense”.1 The association with Hals and historical untruths is permeated by art historians like Pieter Biesboer, curator of the Frans Hals Museum, who belittle modern efforts to reframe the canon and recognise Leyster’s impact by asserting that her artworks were nothing more than “imitating the styles of her successful contemporaries Frans Hals, Dirck Hals, and Jan Miense Molenaer”.2 In an essay Biesboer wrote for the first major exhibition dedicated to Leyster’s life and work, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, he rejected her status as a ‘master painter’, ignoring her many artistic achievements, including being the first woman to be recognised by the Dutch guild and her obvious impact on her contemporaries, and refused to discuss a single one of her artworks without first giving credit to one of her (male) contemporaries in a declaration that her career was “determined” but, ultimately, “without much success”; some of Leyster’s paintings Biesboer discussed depict scenes “very likely also present in Hals’s painting”, and, when Biesboer found himself unable to make even the broadest of connections to another artist, he concluded it must therefore “be based on a lost original by Frans Hals”.3 According to Biesboer, and many others alike, Leyster was simply unable to create anything original or worthy of recognition without the help of a man.  

Attempts to diminish Leyster’s work and attribute it to Hals is similarly seen with historians Christopher D. M. Atkins and Dennis Weller who continue the claim that Leyster was inferior to Hals and that she simply “emulated Halsian elements”.4 Although, given that in 1635 Leyster had to file two formal complaints with the Dutch Guild to stop Hals from his repeated attempts to force her apprentices into defecting to his studio, the struggle for Leyster’s work to remain her own is, in no way, a new one. Other historians, such as Cynthia Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath, point out the similarities between Leyster’s self-portraits and that of her female predecessors, Catharina van Hemessen (1528-65) and Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), showing that it was far more likely Leyster learnt from these women as well as from her own observations and experimentations.5 While both Leyster and Hals painted in the Dutch Golden Age period and used many of the common symbols and styles of this time, her use of colour and tone, as well as chiaroscuro and impastos techniques, reflects the work of artists closely associated with the Utrecht followers of Caravaggio as well as Rembrandt and Vermeer, much more than it does Hals. 

Figure 3: Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait (1556).

Figure 4: Catharina von Hemessen, Self-Portrait (1548).

Despite historian's blatant disregard for the historical truth of Leyster’s impact, it remains uncertain whether or not she and Hals ever worked in the same studio and much less if they collaborated. Studies of both artists’ work show several key differences including Leyster’s distinct short brushstrokes with heavy paint application, her successful depiction of a laughing subject without having it mistaken for crying, as was so often the case, and, crucially, her ability to reproduce the colour, softness and translucency of skin in a manner that gave it dewiness and a sense of life.6 Leyster’s experimentations with artificial light are “ambitious” and “well developed” and her compositions convey a complex narrative about the lives of women and 17th century Dutch society as a whole, showing a careful observation of her subjects and experimentation with style.7 Hals, in comparison, did not attempt to make any innovations to established techniques and was not able to inject the same life into the subjects of his artworks, in consequence, they often remained dull and lifeless, and the narratives behind his subjects are undervalued by the artist making for an altogether rudimentary body of artworks.8 

Dismissing Leyster’s impact on her contemporaries and diminishing her innovative techniques can be traced back to her own century when, shortly after her death, art dealers painted over her signature with that of Hals on many of her artworks because they believed they could make more money on the sale.9 Her distinctive signature, an image of a 'J' and an 'L' crossed next to a star, remained unnoticed for almost 250 years until 1892 when it was finally noticed in Carousing Couple (1630). A century after its creation, Carousing Couple, now attributed to Hals, had somehow made its way into the collection of British diplomat Sir Luke Schaub, where it was first documented at an auction after his death in 1758.10 

Figure 5: Judith Leyster, Carousing Couple (1629)

Carousing Couple was bought and sold several more times, all as a Frans Hals artwork, before being bought in 1892 by British art collector Thomas Lawrie, of Lawrie and Company. After purchasing the painting from Asher Wertheimer, a fellow art collector and dealer, for £4,500 (roughly £716,529 when adjusting for inflation) Leyster’s signature was found under the faked Hals signature and Lawrie filed to sue Wertheimer, although not to reattribute the artwork to Leyster, but for a refund of the £4,500 he paid for a ‘Frans Hals artwork’.11 During the trial, the jury was only able to see a photograph of the painting (one need only imagine the difficulty in adequately viewing an artwork from a photo taken a mere 50 years after the invention of photography), no expert witnesses were called, no possible attribution was suggested other than Hals and Leyster’s name was never mentioned in any capacity.12 Given these circumstances, it would have been of no surprise if Leyster could not have been proved as the true artist. Fortunately, the case was settled out of court and museum curator and art historian, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot began to study other artworks in the Frans Hals Museum collection and found Leyster’s signature in a further seven.  

Figure 6: Leyster's signature on The Last Drop (1629)

When Hofstede de Groot’s study was published in 1893 it sparked international interest in Leyster’s life and work, although, no further investigation was conducted into the works of her other contemporaries, including Dirck Hals, de Grebber and Molenaer, or into the distinct characteristics and identifiers of her artwork which could have enabled other institutions to investigate their own collections. Instead, she became a popular name for historians who could easily attach her to any and all artworks that appeared to be of a ‘Halsian’ style and period in lieu of undertaking further research and analysis or labelling them as being by an ‘unknown’ or ‘anonymous’ artist. The laziness of historians in this period has greatly hindered efforts to solidify Leyster’s work within the canon as it has given reasonable doubt to the many who remain determined to keep the canon in its male-dominated writing. 

After receiving recognition for eight of her artworks, Leyster returned to relative obscurity for almost another century, again overshadowed and ignored in favour of mediocre male artists and usually only exhibited in exhibitions of ‘women’s art’, until 1989 when Frima Fox Hofrichter published a book of her PhD thesis, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, bringing sustained attention and consideration to Leyster’s life and work. 

1 James A. Welu, “Introduction”, in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, ed. James A. Welu and Pieter Biesboer (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Worchester Art Museum: Waanders, 1993), pp.11-15. 2 Pieter Biesboer, “Judith Leyster: Painter of ‘Modern Figures’”, in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, ed. James A. Welu and Pieter Biesboer (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Worchester Art Museum: Waanders, 1993), pp.75-93. 3 Biesboer, “Judith Leyster: Painter of ‘Modern Figures’”. 4 Christopher M. Atkins, The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012). 5 Yael Even “Judith Leyster: An Unsuitable Place for a Woman”, in Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 71 no.3 (2002): 115-124, Doi: 10.1080/00233600260491554 6 Aneta Georgievska-Shine, “Reasons to Look Back: Judith Leyster, 1609–1660, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 21–November 29, 2009”, in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5 (2010): 261-68. 7 Elizabeth Sutton, ed., Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500-1700, (Geneva: Amsterdam University Press, 2019). 8 Judith Leyster (1609-1660): The first woman to become a master painter, ed. Anna Tummers (Amsterdam: Frans Hals Museum, 2009). 9 Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, (London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022), p.44. 10 Louvre Museum, “Collections: The Merry Company”, Louvre Museum, 2019 (of publication), https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059447 11 Frima Fox Hofrichter, “The Eclipse of a Leading Star”, in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, ed. James A. Welu and Pieter Biesboer (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Worchester Art Museum: Waanders, 1993), pp.115-123. 12 Hofrichter, “The Eclipse of a Leading Star”.

Figure 1: Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait (1630). Oil on canvas, 74.6 × 65.1 cm. National Gallery of Art, U.S.A.

Figure 2: Judith Leyster, The Last Drop (1629). Oil on canvas, 89.1 cm x 73.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA. 

Figure 3: Sofonisba Anguissola, Self Portrait at the Easel Painting a Devotional Panel (1556). Oil on panel, 66 cm x 57 cm, Lancut Museum, Poland

Figure 4: Catharina van Hemessen, Self Portrait (1548). Oil on oak wood, 32 cm x 25 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland. 

Figure 5: Judith Leyster, Carousing Couple (1629). Oil on canvas, 68 cm x 54 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Figure 6: Judith Leyster's signature on The Last Drop (1629).