Arcadópolis
Carousing Couple
Judith Leyster, 1630
What you see
A couple sit laughing at a table covered with a blue cloth. On the right, the young man, with a large white collar, plays a violin held against his chest and looks straight at us. Beside him, the woman in a white cap holds a glass in one hand and a metal jug in the other, watching him with a sly look. On the left, a window opens.
The whites of the cap, blouse and collar fill the center with light against the dark background, and the young man’s gray cloak falls in broad folds. The brushwork is loose and quick. Notice the bow of the violin, crossing the scene diagonally, and the edge of a curtain in the upper right corner.
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.
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