Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster painted lively scenes of Dutch life: musicians, drinkers, children and games, often with just one to three figures, lit with bright, flickering light and painted with loose, confident brushwork.

She was born in Haarlem and by 1633 was a member of the city’s Guild of St Luke, one of the first women admitted as a painter. In 1636 she married the painter Jan Miense Molenaer. After her death her work was largely forgotten and credited to Frans Hals or to her husband, until 1893, when her monogram was found under a false Hals signature on a painting bought by the Louvre. Her pictures now hang in the Rijksmuseum, the Frans Hals Museum, the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

In Merry Trio and A Youth with a Jug, look for the laughing faces and quick strokes that made her work so easy to confuse with Hals.