Four people laugh around a barrel with playing cards; at the center, a young woman in a red jacket and green skirt

A Game of Cards

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What you see

Four figures crowd around a barrel used as a table, with cards on its lid. On the left, a man roars with laughter, cards in hand, and behind him another figure in a cap smiles. At the center, a young woman in a red jacket, green skirt and white apron turns toward us and points at the game. On the right, a young man in a hat leans over her shoulder, laughing too.

The red jacket is the heart of the picture, surrounded by browns, greens and deep shadows. Light falls fully on the young woman and leaves the rest in half-darkness. Seek out the earthenware jug glowing in the lower left corner and the metal jug on the floor at right.

About Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster was a Haarlem painter who in 1633 became a master in the city's Guild of St Luke, where she was then the only woman, which allowed her to run her own studio and take pupils. She painted musicians, drinkers and merry scenes with loose, lively brushwork, and signed with a monogram and a star, a pun on her surname, which refers to the “lodestar”. After her death she was forgotten and her pictures were credited to others, above all Frans Hals, until in 1893 the scholar Cornelis Hofstede de Groot recognized her monogram on seven paintings.

All 11 works by Judith Leyster