All works in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum

Judith Leyster

A Fool Holding a Jug, known as ‘The Jolly Drinker’

1629

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 88.2 cm × width 87.9 cm
outer size: height 107.7 cm × width 103 cm × depth 8 cm
sight size: height 87 cm × width 81.5 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, with ligated monogram and star, upper right: 1629 / JL*

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 11 horizontal by 13 vertical threads per centimetre, has been glue-lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is clearly visible on the left and right, and shallow cusping is visible at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, warm white ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of lead white and iron oxides.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front, leaving reserves for the figure, feather and tablecloth in the background. The face and hands were constructed over a warm, flesh-coloured undermodelling. The clothing was applied in grey shades with open, dynamic zigzag strokes, leaving the ground exposed at times, and was then modelled with deep red glazing for the shadows. Reserves for the pipe, ember pot and their shadows were left in the light green tablecloth, which consists of yellow and azurite. The other still-life elements were then added. A second application of cooler grey background paint was used to adjust the form of the head, particularly along the ear, and the lower outline at right. The piping of the coat, the feather, embers, opaque blue cuffs, part of the jug and the fingers of the figure’s left hand were then inserted. The piping was executed with pink and white paints and a red glaze dabbed wet in wet. Black accents were added in the final stage. Compositional changes include the size of the table, the ember pot and the jug (all three were planned smaller in reserve), and the shape and position of the figure’s left hand.
Gwen Tauber, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1568 (0-5), 28 June 1983
technical report: E. Hendriks, Frans Hals Museum, February 1991
paint samples: E. Hendriks, Frans Hals Museum, nos. 60-55/1-5, 6 March 1991
paint samples: E. Hendriks, Frans Hals Museum, no. 60-55/3 (SEM-EDX), 6 March 1991
paint samples: E. Hendriks, Frans Hals Museum, nos. 60-55/6-7 (SEM-EDX), 13 April 1992
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 15 September 2008
infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 23 September 2008

Literature scientific examination and reports

E. Hendriks and K. Groen, ‘Judith Leyster: A Technical Examination of her Work’, in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 93-114, esp. pp. 93, 95-98, 100-06, 110, note 1, 113, note 49

Condition

Fair. There is extensive abrasion in the thinly painted shadows, costume and tablecloth.

Conservation

E. Hendriks, 1992: complete restoration
A. van Grevenstein, 1992: complete restoration

Provenance

…; sale, Mme Vve R.-V., Paris (M. Delestre), 24 April 1890, no. 17, as J. Hals (‘Le Joyeux Buveur. Assis près d’une table recouverte d’un tapis et tourney vers la droite, il est coiffé d’une toque noire orné d’une longue plume et montre en riant un cruchon de bière qu’il vient de vider. Sur la table, un brasero, une pipe et du tabac dans un papier. Ce tableau […] était anciennement attribué à Jan Steen, mais cette attribution ne concorde pas avec le monogramme qui se voit sur cette toile et qui serait celui de J. Hals, fils de Franz. Toile. Haut, 88 cent, large, 83 cent.’);…; from the dealer Franz Kleinberger, Paris, fl. 4,500, to the museum, with the support of the Rembrandt Association, January 1897; on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, since 1960

Object number: SK-A-1685

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Judith Leyster (Haarlem 1609 - Heemstede 1660)

Baptized in Haarlem on 28 July 1609, Judith Leyster was the second youngest of the nine children born to the silk weaver (later brewer) Jan Willemsz and his wife Trijn Jaspersdr. Her father called a house he had purchased in 1601 ‘De Leystar’ (The Lodestar, or The Comet), and later adopted that as his own surname. After filing for bankruptcy in 1624, Jan Willemsz and his family moved for a few years to the village of Vreeland, about 30 kilometres north of Utrecht. Some scholars have argued that Leyster came into contact with the work of the Utrecht Caravaggisti while living there, but their influence probably came indirectly through other Haarlem artists, such as Frans Hals.¹

Leyster’s training is not documented. In his 1628 description of Haarlem, Samuel Ampzing mentioned her in a laudatory passage on the artist Frans de Grebber, his son Pieter and daughter Maria. Leyster’s earliest dated paintings are from 1629 and are stylistically and thematically related to the work of Frans Hals.² Her later genre pieces are small, intimate scenes heavily influenced by Hals’s younger brother Dirck. Leyster’s oeuvre is very small – only about 20 pictures are currently accepted. In addition to her genre paintings there is one extant still life³ and two portraits.⁴

Leyster joined the Guild of St Luke in 1633 and two years later was embroiled in a dispute with Frans Hals over a Willem Woutersz, who had trained with her and left her studio after only a few days to join his. He remained with Hals, who paid a penalty to the guild, and Leyster received only partial compensation. She was also fined for failing to notify the guild of this apprentice in the first place. Shortly afterwards she reported that she had two other pupils, Hendrick Jacobsz and Davit de Burrij.

Leyster and the artist Jan Miense Molenaer posted their banns in Haarlem and were married in nearby Heemstede in 1636. The only work dated after her wedding is a drawing of a tulip from 1643.⁵ Leyster and Molenaer lived in Amsterdam between 1637 and 1648, the year in which they bought a country manor in Heemstede. Apart from an 18-month period in 1655 and 1656, which they spent in Amsterdam, the couple divided their time between Heemstede and Haarlem. At the end of 1659 they both fell ill in Heemstede and drew up a will on 6 November. Molenaer recovered, but Leyster succumbed and was buried on 10 February 1660 in the Reformed Church of Heemstede.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

References
S. Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland, Haarlem 1628 (reprint Amsterdam 1974), p. 370; T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 384; A.P. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gilde aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 151-52; A. Bredius, ‘Een conflict tusschen Frans Hals en Judith Leyster’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 71-73; J. Harms, ‘Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben und ihr Werk’, Oud Holland 44 (1927), pp. 88-96, 112-26, 145-54, 221-42, 275-79, esp. pp. 88-96; E. Neurdenburg, ‘Judith Leyster’, Oud Holland 46 (1929), pp. 27-30; Poensgen in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIII, Leipzig 1929, pp. 176-77; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Het geboortejaar van Judith Leyster’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 62-65; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, passim; F.F. Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 13-21, 81-103 (documents); P. Biesboer, ‘Judith Leyster: Painter of “Modern Figures”’, in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 75-92; E. Broersen, ‘“Judita Leystar”: A Painter of “Good, Keen Sense”’, in ibid., pp. 15-38; Hofrichter in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIX, New York 1996, pp. 292-93; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 223-26; Biesboer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXIV, Munich/Leipzig 2015, pp. 325-27

Entry

Like Judith Leyster’s other dated painting of 1629, The Serenade,⁶ this Jolly Drinker is a single-figure composition that she probably derived indirectly from the Utrecht Caravaggisti by way of Frans Hals. The subject of the outlandishly dressed tippler was popularized by that group of artists in the early 1620s, a prime example being Gerard van Honthorst’s 1623 Merry Violinist with Wineglass in the Rijksmuseum.⁷ Leyster’s immediate model, however, was more likely a picture from around 1628-29 by Frans Hals, which on the basis of the inscription on a print after it by Jonas Suyderhoef has been identified as Monsieur Pekelharing, a stock character in contemporary farces.⁸ The name Pekelharing literally means ‘pickled herring’, the consumption of which causes unquenchable thirst,⁹ which the clownish figure in both Hals’s and Leyster’s paintings attempts to slake with beer from an open jug, and based on their ruddy cheeks and broad grins they are thoroughly enjoying themselves in the process. Seventeenth-century Dutch farcical characters were not standardized in the manner of the commedia dell’arte,¹⁰ which explains the different costumes worn by the men in both pictures. The baggy grey coat with violet piping ending in tassels and large buttons of Leyster’s drinker differs from the red clothing of Hals’s Pekelharing, but both would have been recognized as fool’s dress.

Twice as large as The Serenade and painted on canvas instead of panel, The Jolly Drinker is executed on the same kind of support and is on a similar scale as Hals’s Pekelharing and his other single-figure compositions from the 1620s.¹¹ Leyster also followed his example by showing her drinker on a diagonal against a blank wall. And, of course, the relatively broad brushwork, although tighter than in The Serenade, is an emulation of Hals’s.

The motif of a beret with a long red ostrich feather may have been derived from another work by Hals, Young Man Holding a Skull of around 1626-28.¹² The ‘symbol par excellence of frivolity’ as Van Thiel has put it,¹³ the feather in Leyster’s painting is the perfect complement to the fool’s costume. She may have included it not only because it is a striking device in its own right but also because of its association with the concept of vanity in Hals’s Young Man Holding a Skull and in the model for his picture, an engraving by Lucas van Leyden.¹⁴

In addition to being a hardened drinker, Leyster’s figure, unlike Hals’s Pekelharing, is a tabaksuiger (sucker of tobacco). His Gouda pipe and tobacco are shown next to him. Smoking paraphernalia first appear in Haarlem still-life paintings by Pieter Claesz and Floris van Schooten in the 1620s.¹⁵ Not only the placement of the table parallel to the picture plane in The Jolly Drinker but also the way in which the two wood chips illusionistically protrude over the edge of it into the viewer’s space indicate that Leyster was abreast of this new development. Smoking and drinking were considered almost interchangeable vices by doctors and moralists at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and both sins were associated with vanity, not least by Haarlem moralists around the time Leyster painted The Jolly Drinker.¹⁶ An example is Petrus Scriverius’s 1628 Latin poem Saturnalia de tabaco, which was translated into Dutch in 1630 and given a title page decorated with a skull wearing a winged hourglass and with Gouda pipes sticking out of its mouth.¹⁷ The Latin inscription beneath the image reads in translation: ‘The symbol of life is smoke and all human things are but the breath of a herb. In a word, nothing!’¹⁸

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

E. Jacobsen, ‘Zur Judith Leyster’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1895), p. 435; J. Harms, ‘Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben und ihr Werk’, Oud Holland 44 (1927), pp. 88-96, 112-26, 145-54, 221-42, 275-79, esp. pp. 116, 118-19, 235, no. 9; F.F. Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 15, 23, 25, 26, 39-40, no. 5; Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 130-35, no. 2; Biesboer in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 535-36, with earlier literature; Van Muijden and Tummers in A. Tummers (ed.), De Gouden Eeuw viert feest, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum) 2011-12, p. 100, no. 22; T. Weststeijn, ‘Een feest voor het oog: Lachen en levensechtheid in de zeventiende-eeuwse kunsttheorie’, in A. Tummers (ed.), De Gouden Eeuw viert feest, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum) 2011-12, pp. 20-27, esp. pp. 26-27

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 161, no. 1455; 1934, p. 166, no. 1455; 1976, p. 346, no. A 1685

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Judith Leyster, A Fool Holding a Jug, known as ‘The Jolly Drinker’, 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7470

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