Judith Leyster, 17th Century Dutch master

[Alexandra Tyng]

Judith Leyster is one of my favorite painters. In fact I would go so far as to say she is one of my heroines, not because she overcame all odds, but because she was superbly talented and made her way amongst the great artists of her time and place.

Leyster was born in Haarlem in 1609. She was the 8th child of a brewer. There is no record of her artistic training, and this may be related to the fact that her father's business suffered financial woes during that time period when she would have been studying as an apprentice. She has been called a child prodigy and certainly her talent was evident at a young age. In her teens, she was mentiond as an artist in a book by Samuel Ampzing on the history of Haarlem. In 1633, at the age of 24, she was the only woman admitted to the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, an artists' guild. Within three years, she had three male apprentices, but she sued Fran Hals for stealing one of them within a few days of his arrival. (She never got a satisfactory settlement in this case.) Interestingly, before this incident occurred, she was present at the christening of one of Hals' children.

The vast majority of her work is date between 1629 and 1635. In 1636 he married another artist, Jan Miense Molenaer, who also painted genre scenes but who was cnsidered not as talented as Judith. Only two pieces after 1636 are known to be painted by Leyster. Leyster and Molenaer had five children, two of whom reached adulthood. Judith Leyster died in 1660 at age 50.