24. Judith Leyster: Rediscovering a Forgotten Dutch Master

The Unveiling of Judith Leyster: A Forgotten Dutch Master

In this episode of 'She Changed History,' hosts Cara and Vicky delve into the overlooked story of Judith Leyster, a remarkable female painter from the Dutch Golden Age.  Despite her significant contributions to art, Judith was nearly erased from history due to a combination of gender bias and fraudulent attribution of her work to more famous male contemporaries. Her signature, a star-like 'JL,' was often painted over to attribute her works to the acclaimed painter Frans Hals. The hosts explore her life, struggles, achievements, and the eventual rediscovery and reinstatement of her works, shedding light on the systemic issues that kept her out of historical records for centuries. 

Sources today are:

https://www.britannica.com/art/genre-painting

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/7-amazing-facts-about-judith-leyster/GgUBhb-z8As2Jg?hl=en

https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/artists/who-was-judith-leyster-and-why-was-she-so-important-1234652971/leysters-name-is-forgotten-but-not-her-paintings/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age_painting

https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1485.html

https://nmwa.org/art/artists/judith-leyster/#:~:text=Although%20well%20known%20during%20her,%E2%80%9CFrans%20Hals.%E2%80%9D%20This%20discovery

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-bites-judith-leyster-rediscovery-2457671

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dutch-golden-ages-female-painters-finally-receive-show-their-own-180973533/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20press%20release,van%20Schurman%20and%20Alida%20Withoos.

00:00 Party Aftermath and Dog Talk
01:03 Introduction to the Story
02:08 A Victorian Art Auction
04:01 Judith Leyster's Early Life
05:01 The Dutch Golden Age
06:59 Judith's Artistic Training
10:10 Joining the Painters Guild
11:05 Guild Dispute with Frans Hals
13:54 The Role of Women in the Dutch Golden Age
15:20 Judith Leyster's Artistic Techniques
17:05 Marriage and Family Life
19:17 Rediscovery and Recognition
22:11 The Impact of Misattribution
25:11 Legacy and Modern Recognition
28:43 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

Transcript

audio1572508189: 0:08

You know what it's like. Yeah. You go to a party and the next day you're exhausted. Yeah. And you're thinking about all the things that happened. Or if you're me, you're thinking about all the stupid things you said thinking oh hundred percent. Oh, so he doing like the dog version of that? He's going out. I hope so. Yeah. I hope he's he seemed happy though, so fingers crossed. All works out. We'll see how we go. Oh, speaking of dogs, Ted is in the room with me. He's sleeping. Hey, Ted. We've just been on a big walk, but yay. If he starts being obnoxious, then we'll have, is it okay if we pause and I'll stick him outside? Of course. Hopefully he's flat. I've never seen Ted be obnoxious. Wow, that's a miracle. You think you talk about it like it's a daily appearance, but I've never witnessed. I've never witnessed it. I've never witnessed. Vicky, I could tell you. Next time you come round, have a look at every single pair of shoes in my house. Literally every single pair of shoes, he's left his mark. He's yeah. Love him. are you ready for a story? Yes, ma'am. Let's go. Oh, let's go. hi Kara. Hi Vicki. How are you? Yes, I am well. Thank you. The sun is shining. Ooh, it's spring. Woo. We're inside. I have a window. How about you? Yeah. We've got luscious blue skies and greenery to look at as well as this. So it'll be a fun sesh. Welcome to She Change History. We have a story for you today and. It's particularly, I would like to think it's a very carra and Vicki story because it's one that I've been wanting to do ever since we went to London and had our day trip. Oh. The, which museum was it Tate? It was Tate, wasn't it? It was, yes. Tate Britain that we went to the wrong Tate, but it was Tate Britain. We went to Tate Britain and they had basically an exhibition of women who were written out of history in the art world. And there was so many wasn't there? And we were like, we'll have to do one for the pod. And I've managed to get round to one, which is very exciting. That's amazing. So here we go. Got a little intro for you. So picture this, we're in a Victorian art auction at the air thick with the hushed excitement of wealthy collectors. The auctioneer's voice is a rapid staccato as he's trying to squeeze every last shilling out of the bidders. And then there's Thomas Lawry, a British art dealer, and he's just laid down a hefty 4,500 pounds for a Franz Hall's great painting called the Carousing couple. So think rosy, cheeks. Lots of merriment, very tn seen. This painting is, it's very jolly, very well sought after. But here is where it gets interesting Later when the drama of the auctions died down. The buyer discovers the faint, almost hidden signature beneath one of the figures feet. An ornate J with a little l peeking out looks a little bit like a shooting star, and that shooting star belongs to a different artist altogether. Not the great Hal's friends. That we've just paid through the nose for. Can you imagine Thomas Lori's face? He's just shout out a fortune for this painting, thinking it's one of the greatest artists in the world, and to find out it's the mark of another painter. But not only that, it's the mark of a woman painter. You could just feel his blood. Boiling. Oh. And this is the story of Judith Laer and how her fortune got mis-sold. Wow. Interesting. Oh, that was very cinematic. Dramatized. Thank you. Thank you. It took a little while. Loved it. Sources today are Britannica, of course. Art news a lot of art websites. There's a national museum of women's art. I used an article from them that was really good. The Smithsonian has covered this story as well. And there's a few other little articles that will pop in the show notes. So we need to rewind a bit further. So the auction was in the 18 hundreds. We need to rewind all the way to 1609, and we need to go to the Netherlands where our story takes place. Judith Lisa is born and she is the eighth child of a couple called Jan Wils. And Rin Jaspers, D-R-I-G-N. The brood actually rebrand themself in a way.'cause I think in European countries you don't necessarily take your husband's last name. You keep your last name. But they did eventually adopt the name Laer because they had a brewery. And that brewery was called Lester or Lone Star. That's what that means. Oh. And they lived comfortably until, like many of our stories bankruptcy hits in 1625. And it was around that time that Judith, young lady at that point And her siblings were put to work basically to help cover the family expenses. Now we're in a crucial age in the Netherlands and in Dutch culture, and that is called Dutch Golden Age Have you heard of that? That kind of era. I'm familiar with some of the Dutch work. My mother and I, when we were in Washington, DC went to see a talk about the Dutch Masters and really? Yeah. There's also some novels that I've read that are set around that period, like the girl with the pearl earing and so on. So yeah, it's something I love. I'm very interested. Pitch in it's a period in Dutch history that is around the 17th century, and it is particularly during and after the later part of the 80 years war, which is the war that gave Dutch independence. So the Dutch Republic. It became really prosperous as a nation and their key areas were trading science and art. Art was their biggest, one of their biggest exports. There was lots of large scale kind of migration after the war. And there was also a sharp. It describes it here as a sharp break, but a sharp break with the old monarchist and Catholic cultural traditions, which meant that they were in this resurgence of life phase as a culture. They were quite, I guess the other way of thinking. It's like new age and hippies kind of thing. Just like a little bit alternate loosening up, and they were reinventing themselves as a nation. And because of this this then translated into Dutch art and. The painting of religious subjects. Stories and fables of the Bible that dropped really quickly and lots of new types of art came through, including things like portraits. Landscape, seascape, steel lives, just lots of different types and it was huge. I can't explain the vast volume of, ah, they were churning out as a nation. It was really fascinating. It's like a prolific time and Judith right in the center of it basically. And because of this, it's not surprising that. She trained to be an artist. It's not a hundred percent how she trained. There's two kind of schools of thought. How she trained. One was under Fran's de Grabber who is probably most likely because He already had a female in his workshop, which was his daughter Maria. Oh. So it was, he was quite open to women training and so you could see how that would attract Judith because yeah, she's like me. Safe space. Safe space. On the other hand, you've got the Great who is Franz house, who is a really well known painter and you can see. Similarities in their work a little bit. I'll go onto that a little bit more later. But either way, Judith trains and she's very good. She tended to focus mostly on portraits, either portraits of people, or genre painting. Do you know what genre painting is? No. So that is the idea that you just paint scenes from. Ordinary everyday life. So it could be work or play but they're done in a very realistic manner and they tend to be quite intimate. Whether it's like a a pub scene or making music parties cooking all this kind of like just family life kind of stuff. And she was known in particular for making them really joyful, which is really nice. Yeah. A little bit more about, like I was saying, the prolificness of this period. It was roughly estimated that over 1.3 million pictures were painted in 20 years, from 1640 to 1660. Oh gosh. Which is an insane amount, isn't it? Yeah they're banging'em out. They're firing'em off like a gun. That's crazy. And it's because people wanted them. So there were large fairs people were. There's a demand for them, basically. Is this like a status purchase? I have a bit of money coming in because trade is going well and to show my good taste and wealth. I'm gonna buy a portrait or I'm gonna buy this charming scene of domestic life. I have no idea. I think maybe it was like, I imagine it's exported because. The 1.3 million. That's a lot. Lot. I don't, I think you're gonna have to, it's a lot. Just focus on different markets. One in every room, two in the bathroom. Yeah, that's a lot. Even if you're just selling to your, yeah. If you're only just selling to your own people. So I think there must have been some exporting involved because also it was really well sought after like foreigners really. Were perceptive to this golden age and they were very interested in it. And, and like you said, it is a status thing.'cause how many, like we saw when we went around that museum, how many of those were like owned by King Charles? And you were like, sorry, what? It's King Charles owning this for Yeah, he specked them all up, didn't he? He on eBay, he really did. Clicking away. Outbidding. Sniping those auction. Yeah. I was really surprised at that. So maybe it's a mix. But Judith's in it. So she's at the age of 24 and this just shows how good she was.'cause just remember that volume I just spoke about. She became one of the first women to join the Har and Painters Guild of St. Luke, which is very cool. It's very prestige. It's members only, and she was one of the first women's skin. I think she was like the first or second. I bet that ruffled some feathers. That just shows how good she is. Yeah. So shortly, just to give you an idea of what you needed to get in the Guild. So shortly before she joined the Guild in 1633, they enacted a new charter with members' requirements so to be considered eligible, you'd have had to have three years of experience like study, and you'd have had to have been an apprentice and like a paid apprentice for one. Okay, so she had to work hard for that. not everybody can do that. And she became so successful after joining the Guild that she even opened her own workshop and started teaching others how to pay. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. And this kind of shows, I. I've kept this tiny story in here because I think it's a good foundational piece. What comes later? She opened her own workhouse, not an easy thing to do, and she had trainees, students coming in. One of those students was called William Ster. And he left her after one week because he had landed a spot. At Franz Howell's workshop, so Oh, Franz Howells poached her assistant, basically. Wow. He was meant, yeah. This student was meant to be there to hold Judith and she was gonna train him in return. That's what, that's how that works. And Franz poached him. I bet that was an awkward conversation. What a little pip squeak thinking He can absolutely swan in and swan out. Ooh, I'm cross. Yes. Because the reason you're crossed is'cause this is a breach of procedure. This is not okay. Yes. It's not nice because they're both part of the guild as well. So they're meant to be part of the same circles, right? You meant to respect each other in those circles. And the move had been given without the guild's permission. Oh. So it was completely naughty and instead of letting it slide, she had the same reaction as you. And she took it up with a guild and made a complaint against Hal and she demanded that a quarter of his, the student's fees,'cause you had to pay tuition be. Refunded to her. She was like he's just gone. That's not fair. And I've paid for that. Which was quite a big deal back in the day because not only you just going up against a fellow Gud member, but you're going up against Fran's house who, who is very famous. He's a very well known painter. He's known as father of this golden age, so he is big dog. People recognize him. It, it feels like he could have had any assistant he wanted. Yes. And maybe him hiring this particular one feels a little bit personal. Like, why would you do that? Yes. That's nasty. Which kind of leads into the facts that, they had a history and there is this idea that they had a history because stylistically Judith's Works does resemble that of Fran's house. So either she admired him or she had trained under him, but we don't know. Her brushwork was quite free and spontaneous. She favored similar types of subject to Hals and often did these like energetic Mary scenes that I spoke about earlier. And when she was training, she actually did copy one of his paintings, which was called The Jester, Which suggests she was in how's Alia, which is interesting. But that's as far as that goes. There's no other claims to that. It is just that she may have trained under him, and if you train under someone, you're gonna have a similar style. To them. Yeah I think there's also an element in art sometimes of give the people what they want. So she's a commercial artist in a time where there is a dominant, popular. Style. It seems quite natural, like in music, like in any arts, there's a rash of television shows that are all about a certain thing. Every artist is probably going to have echoes of halls if he's the leading figure in that movement. Absolutely. Same. I'm defending my girl here. Come on. And you're quite right too, because there's not many so women in the. In the Dutch golden age, there's like a handful. I found maybe eight names. So it's probably not jumping to conclusions to assume there might have been some misogyny going on in there if he poached her. Oh you do shocked me. Sorry. I'm sorry to be crude. Yeah. Other names around the age of just to name check a few people. Clara Peters, Rachel Roush, Maria Sch Chen. These are all female artists of the Golden Age, but honestly there are a hand, like thinking of those numbers earlier. 1.3 million paintings. You need a lot of painters to paint. Those paintings. Only eight were female. Wow. Around eight. Yeah, it's all about scale, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. I cannot do the math in my head, but in percentage terms, that is woeful. Yes. So like I said, so LA's got this beautiful art technique. She's very well she's good at what she does'cause she's in the guild. Just another little. Tidbits of how she painted. It was suggested that she works out her compositions as she paints. So it's not here's a trace and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. A few of her works had later been studied by x-ray machines and infrared and that you could see that she'd tried out a few compositions, first rejected them and painted over them, which is quite common in paintings. For example, in her self portrait from 1630, it revealed that. So she painted a picture of her painting a picture, the painting that she paints in this painting was originally a a girl with red parted lips, but she painted over that to a fiddler and it, it sounds a lot more joyful, doesn't it? And a lot more jaunty compared to this quite small little girl with red parted lips. That sounds quite haunting in comparison she has been known to change paintings as she goes. Her paintings also often have layered me meanings, particularly around Vice and the two. So for example, in the last drop, which is a 1629 painting, she has two young men on a drunken night out. A bit jolly, but they're joined by like A skeleton. Which is quite haunting. Lads. Lads. Oh, wait a minute. Oh wait, I might die of alcoholism. That was the great guys. Yeah. Okay. So some of that biblical moralizing is still coming through in these paintings. Yeah. Consequences. Were still there. Even though we were talking about drinking games, music, and it was quite common for her in her paintings anyway, to have a double meaning. Yeah. The majority of her work was painted between 1629 and 1635 because in the 1636 she got married to another painter. She married him and then they'd moved to aunt. Amsterdam when she was 26, she then had five children, so she was busy. Sadly out of the five, only two of them survived to adulthood. So quite a rough, but that again, that just shows the period we're in. Yeah. And. It's thought that she stopped painting, but actually her husband was a painter. There were still workshops there. She trained for three years. That's quite elite to say. She never painted again. They have found one illustration of a tulip. Which is like a bot autonomous tulip. So it's, really detailed that is dated after she had her children in 1643. And it is more than nightly that she still assisted her husband with his art because this was their main source of income. You're a commercial, you wanna help. So yeah, just a little, just FYI. So in November, 1659 Judith and has her husband actually prepared a joint will that suggests that, there's something going on there, maybe one of them's ill. And actually it turns out that Judith did die three months after that will. It shows. Foreshadowing there. She died at the age of 50 and she's buried on a farm in Hemstead which has since been built over. So they don't really know the location of her grave anymore. But all this kind of leads into the next part of the story is that, it goes a bit quieter. So her husband dies a decade later and in his, in the will then because the estate gets sorted out, is that they'd amassed obviously a huge amount of paintings over their lifetime. And these paintings were then sold off and, this sprinkled I guess over society. They just. Get passed on and these things, I don't have paintings. I dunno what happens to this. I'm picturing the auction you described earlier that you Yeah, that kind, I think that kind of thing. That kind of thing. But earlier, obviously hundreds of years earlier, so following her death in 1660, she essentially disappears from the art world, right? Because either her works are left or sold on, or haven't. Been noted or recorded properly. But it is really important to note that she has a really distinctive signature, which is her initials, which is j and l, and when she draws them together, it looks like a star, because that's what her last name means. And she had put this on all her works, sometimes really small, like size of the thinker. Now small and not always in the same place, but they are on the artworks. So like I said, then the story goes quiet as it did for a lot of women of that time. It goes quiet for, I'm talking centuries here. I think she just gets completely written out of the art world despite contributing to it. And none of the women I mentioned earlier are cited throughout history. So for example, there was in a definite record compiled by male art historians in 1908. It was a catalog of works of Dutch painters in the 17th century. That is a specific catalog, right? No women were mentioned in that catalog at all. That's really interesting and I wonder whether it was a deliberate step, a choice. Or whether it was that you don't know to look for what you can't imagine exists, so they, it might not have even occurred to them, Hey, there must have been a few women working in this field, or whether they knew and thought those are lesser works. So the National Gallery of Art Describer the, so sassy, the Golden Age of Dutch painting was one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of visual arts, but the men concluded that women weren't in that. Lovely. So over time she, Judith has completely forgotten her records exist of her because she did marry. So there is a legal document, but other than that, we don't really know. Anything else about her? So her work carried on being traded, sold, exhibited. And this brings us then to our auctions at the start of the story in about 1892 1893, and. That auction happens. Thomas buys this painting, thinks it's from the incredible France, how who has made it through the centuries. People know who he is and is absolutely fuming that it's an unknown artist. And then later it's discovered that the artist is then female. So very upset and feels like he's wasted 4,500 pounds, which is a lot back then. That's a lot of money. It is a lot of money. And what this does is it inspires Dutch art collector and historian Cornelius Hofs Deru because he's the one who figured out that this painting was Misattributed. So he was the one who figured out that there was a little star, which we know is Judah's signature underneath. The painting and it had been painted over. And he was then, this can't be the only one I'm gonna start researching and looking at. So he goes off and that, that's basically some of his life work is finding out which paintings have been mis misattributed. So not only had they painted over Judith's monogram of the J and the L, they had also then added Fran, hows. Oh, so okay, this takes on another, yeah, complexion, right? Because this is the guy who stole her assistant back in the day. So not only this guy and took chances in her lifetime and is still taking from her in depth. Pretty friends guy, honestly. And then also another area is that someone had literally erased Judith from history. They had literally erased her signature. Oh. And painted over the top of it. Isn't that sad? It's, yeah. Like I said, Cornelius goes off and he writes this groundbreaking essay about Lester as the creator of this oil painting. And in that period, he then attributes six to seven more paintings that he thinks are hers as well, that have been misattributed to Hal's. So he finds these paintings, he discovers the monogram underneath, and, by that time, this F has fake, it's not really fake, but falsely attributed had then entered the Louvre. Oh. So it was already in the Louvre by the time that he's put all his research together. So what that says though is that the quality of the work is unassailable.'cause irrespective of whose signature is on the little bottom corner. They're not hanging up any old ta like they're discerning of that after the leave. Yeah. It's fairly high standard, so For sure. Okay. And the leave kept it. They kept it and then they listed it as Judith Laer. Outstanding, which is away. Big points for Cornelius. Big points for the Louvre. Everybody's stepping up here. Love it. It's very good. The guy who bought the painting, so Thomas Laurie. He was still very upset about his 4,500 pounds. Took it to court and basically did the guy who sold it for fraud he won that court case and he managed to get a 25% refund. Oh, so the going rate for a poached art atelier assistant is also the going rate for a false artwork, 25%. Oh yeah, that's your refund. Whatever's going on, they're consistent. I think that is consistent. Fair in 1926, a little bit further on another 35 paintings were identified to be Judith's and if recent histories, any more indication there were gonna be loads more in store because we know how prolific it was at the time. There's another example of this happening to her. So another example of erasure and that is her painting, the boy playing the flute, which she painted in the 1930s. It's basically a picture of a young musician who is looking towards an unseen window, and that painting was owned by the Swedish Royal family Wow. For 150 years. And even though she'd put her star in it, she'd put the J and the L it was thought to be hers. And then it was finally attributed to her after this scandal and kept my understanding is to see it kept, it was kept in the royal family, which was really good on top of that. Now I know you said earlier, conius. Cornelius, there is just a little bit of, a little bit of a gripe I had at Cornelius, and I'm not taken away from the good things he did. But when I was reading, there was this real kind of idea of victim blaming happening throughout this. So they were saying it's Judith's fault. The reasons that she was misattributed were, are often blamed on her. For example, she left a small body of work behind and she had no major commissions in her life. So it is, she didn't really try hard. Of course we're gonna get it wrong. She barely even tried. And also her monogram, her fancy little star. That makes it very hard to identify her actually. And that actually causes us a lot of confusion when we're trying to work this out. Yes. And do your job. Don't come at me to paint over it. Don't paint over it. Like I, I think maybe if we're looking to apportion blame, we should look to the fraudsters who went hall's painting self, or a packet. Paint over that star immediately. Oh my God. God, I could not believe it when I was reading this article. I was like, I dare say, even if she had a giant chunky, neon signature you know those little s's that you drew in school, if you know what I'm talking about? One, yeah. Even if she'd written Judas in that they're paint over that.'cause they want the money that's not on her. It's not on her. And I was absolutely livid. The article was by Art News where I found that. However. Since the dramatic course case scholars have been adding to what Cornelius started what he began more than a century ago, contributing more attributions to the number of paintings that are now considered to be Judas since the 1970. She has been included in surveys of women artists, and she's also had A solo museum exhibition. Most of her works are in museums. Their collections are on view, and most importantly, they are not kept in storage. Judith's story highlights females artists contributions. Not seeing them as muses, but seeing them as creators in their own right. Her story is a crucial turning point in writing art historical records. And the National Museum Women's Art Director, Susan Fisher Sterling, is very committed to this. She's very committed to exhibitions that challenge traditional views, expanding our thinking about art history and what happened in the past. So there is work going on to fix this, but it is wild that it even happened in the first place. And that is the story of Juda la Easter. That is exciting to, to know that work's going on and that we aren't just resting on the lazy assumptions. We are actually going back and using, the research to, to show these pockets. And by really odd coincidence this week I've been writing a, an episode about Artemisia Genki, who is another one of the artists we saw at the Tate. And, it'll be super cool when we do that one to see where these things time and Yeah, like the kind of things that happen to each of them in terms of their career and their work and their viewpoint is really interesting to hear. Yeah. That's so exciting. Yeah. I feel happy for Judith that her work is now out there and, I'm thinking. In the National Gallery in DC when we saw that talk about the Dutch Masters, one of her paintings, the loot player is there. So the one that is in the Washington Gallery is a self portrait of her painting. That's the one you described. Oh, the one with the x-ray? Yeah. Yeah. So she's. Smiling joyfully and painting Another one of her well-known, it's a, the man playing the fiddle? Yeah. Oh, that's the one you were describing. She looks so chill. She's leaning back. She's got the, oh, you just caught me doing the thing I love to do. It's so gorgeous. She looks like someone who's in their element and is happy with life. And if we could all do a bit of that, then yes, please. Oh yes, absolutely. We should all be so lucky. Yeah. And we are so lucky that her work was eventually rediscovered. I feel I was a bit harsh on Cornelius, but perhaps to Cornelius. And also, if that monogram was a male monogram, it wouldn't have been that hard to find. You just know, if that was a, like John Paul Lester. They would've been like, oh, it wasn't that hard actually. You just know. I know. We all know. And I think the reasons that she backed away from the work and there wasn't more of a body of work to support that. Being a well-known signature are fundamentally sexist, that she had children and because that was woman's work and when you had kids, anything else went out the window. Then of course she doesn't have. The same body of art. Yeah. That's it. She simply hadn't got the time. There are other factors in the mix that are also not good and also not her fault. Yeah. Oh, thanks very much for listening. That was so interesting. And yeah, just joyful work. And yeah. Amazing.

audio2663295054: 31:43

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