Arcadópolis
The Jolly Drinker
Judith Leyster, 1629
What you see
A man seen half-length leans to the right and laughs at us, head tilted. He wears a black beret with a long red feather that sweeps down over his shoulder, and a dark gray coat. With both hands he lifts a blue-gray stoneware jug and tips it toward us. At lower left, on a table, sit a small brazier, a pipe and a crumpled paper.
The plain gray background lets the red feather and his rosy face become the color accents. The brushwork is loose and quick in the coat and the feather. Don’t miss the two little sticks crossed in an X on the table and, on the wall to the right of the beret, a small, barely visible monogram.
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.
More by Judith Leyster
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