Judith Leyster, Golden Age Painter

Judith Leyster (died 10 February 1660)

Unlike many early-modern women artists, Judith Leyster did not follow in her father or brother's footsteps, training in their studios. (See, for example, two we have already noted, Elisabetta Sirani and Maria Sibylla Merian.) How and why Leyster became an artist and where she received her training are unknown.

However she learned her craft, she had enough of a reputation by 1627 to be mentioned in a description of the city of her birth, Harlaam, but her first known, signed painting is dated to 1629. By 1633, she was a member of the Harlaam Guild of St. Luke, the first female painter registered as a member of the guild. Records show that Leyster herself took on the training of apprentices and, along with her husband, another painter, operated a studio in Harlaam and in Amsterdam.

Judith Leyster, Self Portrait (1633), perhaps
her submission piece to the Harlaam Guild

The number of paintings attributed to Leyster ranges from 20 to 35. Almost all of her work was produced between 1629 and 1636, the date of her marriage. Only a few works can be dated after her marriage--during the time when she had five children. 

The lovely Blompotje (Flowers in a Vase), below, was recently identified as a work by Leyster, dated to 1654. According to art historian Frima Fox Hofrichter, 

Many art historians have often assumed that Judith Leyster gave up painting upon her marriage. With the discovery of the flower still life and its date of 1654, we now have documentation that she continued her career as a painter. It is likely that Leyster moved to still-lives and botanical studies after her marriage, perhaps to split the market with her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer.

You might be interested in this wonderful book on Leyster and her work by Pieter Biesboer and James Welu, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World. And of course there is Frima Fox Hofrichter's Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland's Golden Age. (Yikes! It's very expensive--interlibrary loan?)

Germaine Greer's The Obstacle Race contains an excellent discussion and analysis of Leyster, about whose life and work she notes: "The most remarkable case of a disappearing oeuvre (until the next one comes along) is probably that of Judith Leyster." Leyster's name and knowledge of her work may have begun to be forgotten or "eclipsed" as early as the date of her marriage; her work was also misattributed to the painter Franz Hals, among others, despite the fact that Leyster signed her work. As Greer notes, "If Judith Leyster had not been in the habit of signing her work with the monogram JL attached to a star, . . . her works might never have been reattributed to her" (136).

Blompotje [Flowers in a Vase] (1654), 
recently identified as a work
by Judith Leyster

Maria Sibylla Merian: Naturalist, Artist, Illustrator

Maria Sibylla Merian (died 13 January 1717)

Maria Sibylla Merrian,
about age 30

Born in 1647 in Frankfurt, Maria Sibylla Merian was the daughter of Matthaus Merian, a publisher and engraver; after her father's death, her mother married the painter Jacob Marrel, most well known for his still-life paintings. It was Marrel who seems to have trained and encouraged the young Merian. At age eighteen, Merian married one of her stepfather's pupils, the artist Johann Andreas Graff, and then moved with him to Nuremberg, where she helped to support her young family by teaching drawing and embroidery to young women. 

While living in Nuremberg, Merian published three volumes of botanical illustrations, known collectively as The New Book of Flowers (Neues Blumenbuch). Volume 1 was published in 1675, Volumes 2 and 3 in 1677. In 1679 she published a two-volume study of the metamorphosis of moths and butterflies, The Caterpillars' Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food, or, more simply, The Caterpillar Book (Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung). This publication, with its stunning illustrations, is the result of Merian's careful observations of silkworms, a study that had begun when she was just thirteen.

From The New Book of Flowers

After the death of her stepfather in 1681, Merian and her two daughters returned to her mother's home. From Frankfurt, she relocated with her mother and daughters to Friesland, where they lived with her brother in a religious community. By 1691 she was in Amsterdam, and there she set up a studio with her daughters, Johanna Helena and Dorothea Maria. While in Amsterdam, she was offered the opportunity of travelling to Surinam.

In 1699, she left Amsterdam with her younger daughter, Dorothea Maria, for the Dutch colony, where she spent two years studying and sketching. The culminating achievement of her life, her drawings, paintings, and illustrations from her time spent in South America, The Insects of Surinam (Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium), was published in  Amsterdam in 1705.

There are many books about Maria Sibylla Merian in print--biographies, critical analyses, and facsimile reproductions of her work. But, for a wonderful and accessible introduction, I'd suggest looking at the J. Paul Getty Museum online exhibition by clicking here (the museum mounted a Merian exhibition, "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science," in 2008).

There is also a feast of Merian illustrations available at Google Images. 

A Surinam Cayman

And a Google Doodle from 2 April 2013, in honor of Merian's 366th birthday!

Update: On 23 January 2017, the New York Times published JoAnna Klein's "A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years." The piece is an excellent survey of Merian's work and is accompanied by wonderful illustrations. To access the story, click here.

Also noted was an international conference on Merian, scheduled for 7-9 June 2017: "Changing the Nature of Science and Art: Intersections with Maria Sibylla Merian." For details, click here. Update, January 2026: The link to the conference site, which was still available in 2025, is now no longer working—the link now takes you to conference information preserved at the Internet Archive.

Finally, Merian's masterwork on metamorphosis has been republished in a glorious facsimile edition (click here).

Update, 12 January 2023: A helpful friend of the blog has just forwarded information about a recent  exhibition at the Mauritshuis, "In Full Bloom," featuring floral still-life paintings, including those by Merian. For information about the exhibition itself (February to June 2022), this link to the Mauritshuis is still working, and though it is too late now to see the paintings in person, there are a couple of great videos. You may also like this review of the exhibition from ArtNet.

Update, 1 September 2024: For Jennifer Rankin’s article about a new Merian exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, featuring a first-edition of The Insects of Surinam (from The Guardian), click here.