Detail View: Visual Resources Teaching Collection: Young Boy Playing Flute

aahi0000037

Young Boy Playing Flute

full view

early to mid 17th century

creation

Judith Leyster (Dutch, 1581-1660)

female

Dutch painter. She painted genre scenes, portraits and still-lifes, and she may also have made small etchings; no drawings by her are known. She specialized in small intimate genre scenes, usually with women seated by candlelight, and single half-length figures set against a neutral background (see fig.). She was influenced by both the Utrecht caravaggisti and Frans Hals. Leyster may have worked in Hals's shop (c. 1626–8 and c. 1629–33), where she copied and adapted several of his paintings, although the nature of her work in his shop has been disputed. These possible works include The Jester (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), a copy after Hals's Lute Player (Paris, Louvre), and the Rommel-pot Player (Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), after Hals's lost work. However, it is also possible that her early career began in the shop of the Haarlem portrait painter Frans Pietersz. de Grebber, with whom she is mentioned in Samuel Ampzing's poem about Haarlem of 1627/8. This would also explain the somewhat passé nature of her few known later portraits, for example Portrait of a Woman (1635; Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.), the shallow space of which seems to push the woman forward on to the picture plane. In 1628 Leyster's family moved to Vreeland, near Utrecht, where, it is assumed, she came under the direct influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst. The influence of the Caravaggisti can be seen in subsequent night-scenes, including those executed in Haarlem, such as The Serenade (1629; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), which depicts a lute player illuminated by flickering yet unseen candlelight. The broad brushstrokes of the costume and the face also show the influence of Hals and give an illusion of monumentality to this small painting (455×350m). The upward glance of the lute player is a typical device of Leyster's. Leyster is credited with introducing a visible light source to nocturnal painting in Haarlem, for example the lit candle between a drinker and a smoker in the Last Drop (c. 1629; Philadelphia, PA, John G. Johnson priv. col.) and the lit lamp in The Proposition (1631; The Hague, Mauritshuis). In this painting, the lamplight illuminates the scene of a man offering money to a woman for her sexual favours, a style and subject common among the Caravaggisti; but Leyster's woman does not appear to be a courtesan, nor is she encouraging this overture, unlike a copy of the work (ex-Amédée Provost priv. col.; sold Brussels, 20 June 1928, lot 56) where such additional motifs as a wine-glass and a map over the woman's head imply that she is a vrouwe-wereld (Dut.: 'woman of the world'). In adapting this common theme, Leyster seems to have questioned the usual assumption of the woman as temptress. By 1633 Leyster had become a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke. As her admission piece she may have submitted her Self-portrait (Washington, DC, N.G.A.), which shows her seated at her easel in formal dress, wielding a palette and 18 brushes and painting a fiddler; this fiddler reappears in her Merry Company (The Netherlands, priv. col.). On 1 June 1636 she married the Haarlem genre and portrait painter jan miense Molenaer; they lived in Amsterdam until October 1648, when they moved to Heemstede. They also owned several properties in Amsterdam and Haarlem, which they seem to have rented out for additional income. They had five children between 1637 and 1650, but only two survived their parents. Leyster's Tulip pages (1643; Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.), possibly part of a tulip-bulb catalogue and executed in watercolour and silverpoint on vellum, suggest a scale and change of medium and subject that may have been more adaptable to her new domestic situation. Many paintings by Leyster are recorded in the inventory of Molenaer's possessions after his death in 1668. Included are several other still-lifes as well as many works now lost. Leyster's output after her marriage and after her children were born seems greatly reduced, although it cannot be discounted that she may have collaborated with her husband. In 1647–8 she was praised by Theodore Schrevel in his book on Haarlem, in which he makes a pun on her name, calling her Ley/sterr (Dut.: 'lodestar'), a 'leading star' in art. Leyster also used this pun in her monogram, formed by her conjoined initials and a star shooting out to the right. Despite praise from her contemporaries, she was not mentioned in other early sources, such as Cornelis de Bie's Het gulden cabinet, published only a year after her death, and Arnold Houbraken's Groote schouburgh of 1718–21. By the end of the 19th century she was virtually unknown, so much so that no works were ascribed to her. Her monogram was thought either indecipherable or, as in a court case in 1892 involving her painting the Carousing Couple (1630; Paris, Louvre), was said to contain all the letters of Hals's name. This painting of a vivid, buoyant couple drinking, smoking and making music in a canopied arbour, marks the turning-point in Leyster's reputation. Discoveries of other paintings by her followed, many previously ascribed to Hals; others, such as her masterpiece of light and still-life elements, the Young Flute Player (Stockholm, Nmus.), were once attributed to Jan de Bray. Leyster's paintings of mothers and children and women with their lovers may have served as prototypes for genre painters of the second half of the 17th century, such as Gerard ter Borch II, Gabriel Metsu and Pieter de Hooch. Also, 18th-century artists such as Alexis Grimou based some of their single half-length figures on her work. Three students are recorded in Leyster's shop: Willem Woutersz. in 1634, Davidt de Burry and Hendrick Jacobs. Although no works by them are known, it is assumed that they made many copies of her paintings. Woutersz. was also the subject of a dispute between Leyster and Hals when the latter accepted him as a student, without permission of the Guild, and when he was already in Leyster's shop. (Grove Art Online Accessed 2006-07-28)

Netherlandish Renaissance-Baroque styles

17th century

flutes (aerophones)

recreation

boys

genre

violins

musical instruments

musicians

music

hats

oil paintings

paintings (visual works)

paintings

oil on canvas

73 cm (H) x 62 cm (W)

Signed

Nationalmuseum (Sweden)

repository

accession

Stockholm, Sweden

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