Arcadópolis
Young Flute Player
Judith Leyster, c. 1635
What you see
A boy seated on a chair plays a wooden flute that crosses the picture on a diagonal. He wears a red beret, a white ruff and a brown coat, and glances sideways and upward, absorbed. Behind him, on the bare wall, hang a violin with its bow and a recorder. The line of the flute carries the eye from his face to the instruments.
The palette is limited: grays, browns and ochres, with the red beret as the only lively note. The plain, empty wall lets the shapes take center stage. Keep an eye out for the round finial of the chair at the left edge and the fingers covering the holes of the flute.
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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