Object data
oil on panel
support: height 47 cm × width 34.5 cm
Judith Leyster
A Lute Player, known as ‘The Serenade’
1629
Inscriptions
- signature and date, with ligated monogram and star, upper right: 1629 / J*
Technical notes
Support The panel was thinned to max. 0.2 cm and then transferred onto a plywood board in 1951. Wooden strips at the top (approx. 2.8 cm) and on the left and right (approx. 1 cm) had already been added at an earlier date. A photograph of the reverse before thinning shows that all sides were bevelled.
Preparatory layers The single, cool white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of lead white with minute amounts of fine black pigment particles and iron oxides.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. An initial lay-in was made with impasted brushstrokes in black, dark brown, tan and light grey opaque paints. This undermodelling has remained partly visible as a ‘halo’ in the background around the head, as well as in the shadows in the right part of the face and in the lap, for example. The figure was left in reserve in the light grey paint and was built up wet in wet with unblended, opaque paints with a great deal of impasto and short, clear brushstrokes. The contours were adjusted with the final grey-green layer of the background. The green in the striped doublet is a mixture of smalt and yellow. The collar, cuffs and white highlights were added in the final stage. Changes are apparent in the body of the lute on either side of the hand, possibly indicating that the latter was originally placed more to the left with an extended thumb. The middle, ring and little fingers of the other hand were probably also first planned slightly more to the left.
Gwen Tauber, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- X-radiography: RMA, no. De Wild 104, March 1930
- technical report: E. Hendriks, Frans Hals Museum, 24 September 1991
- paint samples: K. Groen, RCE, nos. 5624-26 (SRAL nos. 36/1-3), November 1991
- paint samples: K. Groen, RCE, nos. 5624-25 (SEM-EDX), RCE doc. file 98/22, 3 June 1994
- infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 3 March 2008
- paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-2326/1-2, 3 March 2008
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 3 March 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. 94-95, 97-98, 101-02, 104, 106, 112, note 9, 113, note 49
Condition
Fair. There is some abrasion of the impasto in the background. The rich red glaze used in the stripes of the knee britches has faded considerably.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1951: transferred onto plywood board
- L. Kuiper, 1974: complete restoration
Provenance
? Probate inventory, Jan Miense Molenaer, Haarlem, 10 October 1668, in the vestibule (‘Een luijtslager van sijn huijsvrou’);1...; collection Pieter van Winter (1745-1807), Amsterdam, as Frans Hals;2 his daughter, Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785-1845), Amsterdam;3 her husband, Jonkheer Hendrik Six (1790-1847), Lord of Hillegom, Amsterdam, as Frans Hals; his sons, Jonkheer Jan Pieter Six (1824-1899), Lord of Hillegom, and Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Six (1827-1905), Lord of Vromade; from whose heirs, with 38 other paintings, fl. 751,400, to the museum, with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1908
Object number: SK-A-2326
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
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.4
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.5 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 life6 and two portraits.7
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 1643.8 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
This half-length depiction of a lute player and the Rijksmuseum’s Jolly Drinker are Judith Leyster’s earliest signed and dated paintings.9 Both are from 1629. Von Bode was the first scholar to question the traditional attribution of The Serenade to Frans Hals on the basis of the prominent ‘J’ of the monogram, which he took to be the first letter of Jan Hals’s name.10 However it was not until 1893, in a seminal article by Hofstede de Groot, that the distinctive monogram on The Serenade and five other pictures was identified as Leyster’s.11 On the present work, it is composed of a ‘J’ and a star shooting out to the right in reference to the artist’s name, which can be translated literally as ‘lodestar’.12
The earliest dated half-length single-figure pictures of musicians in the northern Netherlands were produced by the Utrecht Caravaggisti in 1621, and became a staple in the oeuvres of Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerard van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen. In Haarlem, Frans Hals was inspired by these works to paint a single-figure lute player around 1623.13 It was probably Hals’s composition rather than his Utrecht models that in turn served as Leyster’s primary source of inspiration. Just like his lutenist, hers is cut off on both sides and shown close up. Such pictorial effects, which create a sense of immediacy, are also employed in the Utrecht paintings of musicians. It is especially the di sotto in su perspective, as if the figure is situated on a stage above the viewer, and the way in which he looks upward out of the corner of his gleeful eyes, that suggests that Hals’s lute player was Leyster’s direct model.14 She enhanced the effect of this fleeting gesture by giving the feathered beret a halo of light and showing the figure’s lips parted – perhaps in song.
Most notably suggestive of Frans Hals rather than the Utrecht Caravaggisti is the sketchy execution. Although clearly imitative of Hals’s manner, Leyster generally uses shorter brushstrokes, which are especially noticeable in the hands and the face, and the paint is applied in several thick, opaque layers.15 Perhaps the most striking aspect of this composition, the strong illumination from a hidden light source of the lutenist’s face and right arm and shoulder, was definitely not derived from Hals. This lighting effect was also an innovation of the Utrecht Caravaggisti and was employed in many of their single-figure pictures of musicians. But although Frans Hals never used it,16 another Haarlem artist, Pieter de Grebber, did, and it cannot be ruled out that Leyster adopted this remarkable device of artificial, hidden illumination from him rather than directly from an Utrecht model.17
Leyster departs from the example of both the Utrecht Caravaggisti and Frans Hals in her lutenist’s clothing. Instead of the striped doublets worn by the musicians of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, which were based on the dress of Caravaggio’s and Manfredi’s bravi, and the fool’s costume worn by Frans Hals’s lute player, Leyster’s figure is clad in contemporary, albeit very fancy apparel: a doublet with slashed sleeves, lace collar and cuffs, and colourful bouffant knee britches. Similar flamboyant clothing can be found in Haarlem paintings of courting couples of that day, in which musical instruments often play a significant role. An example is a 1626 Merry Company by Dirck Hals in San Francisco.18
Music and love were often combined in seventeenth-century literature and the visual arts.19 As Jacob Cats put it ‘love leads to singing’ (‘liefde doet singen’). In an emblem book of 1611 by Gabriel Rollenhagen (Nucleus emblematum), the saying ‘Amor docet musicam’ or ‘Love teaches music’ is illustrated with an engraving showing Cupid holding a lute and gesturing to a courting couple in the background. Examples of the connection between love and music in painting are Gerard van Honthorst’s Procuress in Utrecht,20 in which the young prostitute holds a lute firmly by the neck, and Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Couple Playing the Lute and Singing of 1628,21 in which the woman’s pronounced décolleté provides an erotic charge. Given the literary and pictorial combination of love and music-making it is not too far-fetched to assume that the smiling countenance of Leyster’s figure is turned up towards the object of his affections.
Jonathan Bikker, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
W. von Bode, Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei, Braunschweig 1883, p. 102 (as Jan Hals); C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Judith Leyster’, Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 14 (1893), pp. 190-98, 232, esp. p. 197; 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. 113, 115-17, 119, 121, 124, 235, no. 6; F.F. Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 23, 25, 31, 32, 38-39, no. 3; 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, esp. p. 77; 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. 124-29, no. 1, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1909, p. 383, no. 1455a; 1934, p. 166, no. 1455a; 1960, pp. 175-76, no. 1455 A1; 1976, p. 346, no. A 2326
Citation
Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Judith Leyster, A Lute Player, known as ‘The Serenade’, 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8894
(accessed 10 November 2024 00:45:34).