Judith Leyster
(Haarlem 1609–1660 Heemstede)
Merry Company
c. 1629
oil on canvas
74.5 x 63.2 cm (29¼ x 24⅞ in.)
Currently on view: New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, European Paintings galleries.
‘There also have been many experienced women in the field of painting who are still renowned in our time, and who could compete with men. Among them, one excels exceptionally, Judith Leyster, called a true leading star in art, as her name indicates.’
Theodorus Schrevelius, Harlemias, ofte, om beter te seggen, de eerst stichtinghe der stad Haerlem, Haarlem, 1648, pp. 384–85
Hover to zoom to maximum level or click to enlarge
Artwork details
This vibrant painting of merrymakers is an early testament to Judith Leyster’s extraordinary talent and her emergence as one of the most accomplished women artists of seventeenth-century Holland. Painted around 1629, when she was only nineteen or twenty years old, it already demonstrates the confidence of her brushwork and her mastery of genre subjects, a specialisation that would define her career from an early stage.
Leyster presents a lively gathering, possibly set during Shrovetide festivities preceding Lent, in which revellers drink, sing, dance and play music. The cheerful violinist, playfully kicking up his foot to the rhythm, reappears in her celebrated Self-portrait, c. 1630 (National Gallery of Washington, D.C.), as the image taking shape on the canvas at her easel, underscoring the importance of this figure in her work. Infrared photography of the Self-portrait has revealed that Leyster initially depicted herself painting a portrait before deciding to replace it with the figure of the fiddler, which would suggest that the musician held particular significance for her. As its many copies attest, Merry Company was a successful composition, and thus the fiddler was a fitting addition to a personal portrait that was intended as her artistic calling card to advertise her skills as both a genre painter and a portraitist.
Merry Company has long been considered to be a pendant to The Last Drop, 1639 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The two paintings correspond in theme and composition. Merry Company shows the light-hearted mirth achieved by drinking, whereas the menacing atmosphere of The Last Drop may serve as a warning for excessive indulgence. The theatricality of Merry Company is heightened by the figures’ attire, which evokes the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte, the influential genre of improvised theatre that occupied a prominent place in the visual and performing culture of the period.
Although no records attest to Leyster having studied with her fellow townsman Frans Hals (1582/3–1666), the close affinities in style and subject matter suggest that she was among his most gifted and successful followers. She often included distinctly Halsian motifs in her work, such as the central figure in the trio shown here, who looks left, directing his attention at the violinist, while pointing in the opposite direction at the group in the window. Like both Hals and Rembrandt (1606–1669), Leyster appears to have painted her compositions directly onto the canvas rather than relying on preliminary drawings. Her free, assured brushwork lends the composition a remarkable sense of spontaneity and vitality.
In 1633, Leyster became the first woman to be admitted as a master in the Haarlem painter’s guild, a distinction that enabled her to establish her own workshop and sell her paintings independently. Despite the considerable success she achieved during her lifetime, her reputation faded, and, like that of many other women artists, her work was frequently attributed to male contemporaries – notably Hals and perhaps most often to her husband, the artist Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610–1668).
Sir George Donaldson (1845–1925), London, by 1903;
With Frederik Muller & Co., Amsterdam, April 1908 (the pendant sold that year to John G. Johnson, Philadelphia);
With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 1910;
Robert William Pettigrew (d. 1928), Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales;
By whose Executrices sold, Christie’s, London, 8 February 1929, lot 129, for 175 guineas, to Wise;
Magdalena Christina van den Honert (1899–1979), Blaricum, by 1932, and by descent to
Dr and Mrs P.L. Galjart, Soest, by 1984, until 1986;
With Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1986;
With Noortman Master Paintings, London and Maastricht, 6 January 1988;
From whom acquired by Eric Albada Jelgersma (1939–2018) and his wife Marie-Louise, Switzerland, by 1993;
His posthumous sale (‘Important Old Master Paintings from the Eric Albada Jelgersma Collection’), Christie’s, London, 6 December 2018, lot 12;
Where acquired by The Klesch Collection.
London, Guildhall, 1893;
London, Guildhall, Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School, 28 April – 25 July 1903, no. 185 (as Frans Hals and Lyster [sic], Jovial Comedians, 34½ x 29 in.; with its pendant, no. 193, The Health of the Troop, 34½ x 29 in.; both lent by Donaldson);
Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Co, Tentoonstelling van Oude Meesters, 1918, no. 7, repr. (as Singing Girls – Three girls in men’s clothing);
The Hague, Mauritshuis, long-term loan, 1932–46 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
The Hague, International Red Cross Headquarters, on loan (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Holländer des 17. Jahrhunderts, 4 November – 20 December 1953, no. 78 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Mostra di Pittura Olandese del Seicento, 4 January – 14 February 1954, no. 80, pl. 15 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; West Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, 18 March – 13 May; 8 June – 12 August; and 7 September – 8 November 1984, no. 61, pl. 18 (as c. 1629–31; lent by Mr and Mrs P.L. Galjart, The Netherlands);
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Judith Leyster: schilderes in een mannenwereld and Worcester Art Museum, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, 16 May – 22 August and 19 September – 5 December 1993, no. 5;
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Judith Leyster, 1609–1660, 21 June – 29 November 2009;
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Judith Leyster (1609–1660), de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd, 19 December 2009 – 9 May 2010;
São Paulo, MASP, Women’s Histories: Artists Before 1900, 23 August – 17 November 2019;
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, long-term loan, since 20 November 2023.
A.G. Temple, Catalogue of the Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School, exh. cat., Guildhall, London 1903, p. 148, no. 185 (as Frans Hals and Lyster [sic]);
‘The Dutch Exhibition at the Guildhall. Article I.—The Old Masters’, The Burlington Magazine, 2, no. 4, June 1903, pp. 52–55;
Frederik Muller & Co, Album ter herinnering aan de tentoonstelling van oude meesters, Amsterdam 1918, no. 7, reproduced;
Harms, ‘Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben and ihr Werk, III and IV’, Oud Holland, 44, 1927, pp. 88, 112, 145–47, 149, 154, 221, 275, fig. 8, and 237, no. 15;
G.D. Gratama, ‘Het Portret van Judith Leyster door Frans Hals’, Oud Holland, 47, 1930, pp. 71, 74, fig. 3;
Annual Report of the Mauritshuis, 1932, p. 29;
Annual Report of the Mauritshuis, 1946, p. 52;
Holländer des 17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat., Kunsthaus, Zurich, 1953, p. 49, no. 78;
Mostra di pittura olandese del seicento, exh. cat., Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1954, p. 62, no. 80;
S. Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols, London 1974, vol. III, p. 116, under L 2;
A. Sutherland Harris and L. Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550–1950, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976, p. 139, under no. 22;
F. Fox Hofrichter, ‘Judith Leyster’s ‘Self Portrait’: ‘Ut Pictura Poesis’, in Essays in Northern European Art. Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his Sixtieth Birthday, Doornspijk 1983, pp. 106–8 (as 1630);
P. Sutton, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, West Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1984, pp. 234–35, no. 61, pl. no. 18;
C. Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant in der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt 1987, p. 361, B1a);
F. Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 25, 34, 41–42, no. 9 and under no. 10, pl. III (as c. 1629);
J. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 1993, pp. 79, 83–84, 95, 96, 98–99, figs 42S and X, 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 106–7, figs 43H and N, 112 n. 19, 113 nn. 43, 49 and 56, 118, 130, under no. 2; 150–55, no. 5, repr. 151; 156, 161, under no. 6; 162, 165–66, under no. 7; 185, 187 n. 15, under no. 10; 198, under no. 12; 263, under nos 23 and 24; 266–68, under no. 25;
C. Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, exh. cat., Worcester and Haarlem 1993, pp. 150–55, no. 5;
F. Fox Hofrichter in Judith Leyster, 1609–1660, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2009, pp. 7, 8, 10, 13–14 and 15, repr. p. 6, fig. 9;
A. Tummers, Judith Leyster: de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd, exh. cat., Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 2009, pp. 15, 18, fig. 16;
A.K. Wheelock Jr., ‘Judith Leyster/ Self-Portrait/ c. 1630’, in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, NGA Online Editions, 2014, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/37003
C.D.M. Atkins, ‘The Last Drop (The Gay Cavalier) by Judith Leyster (cat. 440)’, in C.D.M. Atkins (ed.), The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works, Philadelphia 2018, pp. 600–2, 605–6 and 607–8, fig. 1;
E. Pinheiro in Women’s Histories, Feminist Histories, M. Leme, A. Pedrosa, I. Rjeille (eds), exh. cat., Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2019, pp. 122–23, fig. 46;
C. Grimm, Frans Hals and his Workshop, RKD Studies, The Hague 2024, under ‘1.10 A connection with Judith Leyster’, figs 110, 112, 114–15 (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/1-a-visit-to-the-workshop/110-a-connection-with-judith-leyster/); under ‘A4 Paintings created in Frans Hals’s Workshop; Genre Paintings’, no. A4.2.47a, fig. 3 (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/a4-paintings-created-frans-halss-workshop/a42-genre-paintings/a4244-a4258/); and under ‘B Documentary Workshop Replicas, Copies and Variants’, no. B2b (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/b-documentary-workshop-replicas-copies-and-variants/b1-b10/);
V. Treanor, ‘Portraits of the Artist’, in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, V. Treanor and F. Van Dam (eds), exh. cat., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, 2025, p. 42, fig. 8;
F. Fox Hofrichter, ‘Judith Leyster and the Art Market’, in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, exh. cat., Washington, D.C. and Ghent 2025, p. 233.
If you would like to use this image for educational purposes, please contact us.
Hover to zoom to maximum level or click to enlarge
Judith Leyster
(Haarlem 1609–1660 Heemstede)
Merry Company
c. 1629
oil on canvas
74.5 x 63.2 cm (29¼ x 24⅞ in.)
Currently on view: New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, European Paintings galleries.
‘There also have been many experienced women in the field of painting who are still renowned in our time, and who could compete with men. Among them, one excels exceptionally, Judith Leyster, called a true leading star in art, as her name indicates.’
Theodorus Schrevelius, Harlemias, ofte, om beter te seggen, de eerst stichtinghe der stad Haerlem, Haarlem, 1648, pp. 384–85
Artwork details
This vibrant painting of merrymakers is an early testament to Judith Leyster’s extraordinary talent and her emergence as one of the most accomplished women artists of seventeenth-century Holland. Painted around 1629, when she was only nineteen or twenty years old, it already demonstrates the confidence of her brushwork and her mastery of genre subjects, a specialisation that would define her career from an early stage.
Leyster presents a lively gathering, possibly set during Shrovetide festivities preceding Lent, in which revellers drink, sing, dance and play music. The cheerful violinist, playfully kicking up his foot to the rhythm, reappears in her celebrated Self-portrait, c. 1630 (National Gallery of Washington, D.C.), as the image taking shape on the canvas at her easel, underscoring the importance of this figure in her work. Infrared photography of the Self-portrait has revealed that Leyster initially depicted herself painting a portrait before deciding to replace it with the figure of the fiddler, which would suggest that the musician held particular significance for her. As its many copies attest, Merry Company was a successful composition, and thus the fiddler was a fitting addition to a personal portrait that was intended as her artistic calling card to advertise her skills as both a genre painter and a portraitist.
Merry Company has long been considered to be a pendant to The Last Drop, 1639 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The two paintings correspond in theme and composition. Merry Company shows the light-hearted mirth achieved by drinking, whereas the menacing atmosphere of The Last Drop may serve as a warning for excessive indulgence. The theatricality of Merry Company is heightened by the figures’ attire, which evokes the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte, the influential genre of improvised theatre that occupied a prominent place in the visual and performing culture of the period.
Although no records attest to Leyster having studied with her fellow townsman Frans Hals (1582/3–1666), the close affinities in style and subject matter suggest that she was among his most gifted and successful followers. She often included distinctly Halsian motifs in her work, such as the central figure in the trio shown here, who looks left, directing his attention at the violinist, while pointing in the opposite direction at the group in the window. Like both Hals and Rembrandt (1606–1669), Leyster appears to have painted her compositions directly onto the canvas rather than relying on preliminary drawings. Her free, assured brushwork lends the composition a remarkable sense of spontaneity and vitality.
In 1633, Leyster became the first woman to be admitted as a master in the Haarlem painter’s guild, a distinction that enabled her to establish her own workshop and sell her paintings independently. Despite the considerable success she achieved during her lifetime, her reputation faded, and, like that of many other women artists, her work was frequently attributed to male contemporaries – notably Hals and perhaps most often to her husband, the artist Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610–1668).
Sir George Donaldson (1845–1925), London, by 1903;
With Frederik Muller & Co., Amsterdam, April 1908 (the pendant sold that year to John G. Johnson, Philadelphia);
With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 1910;
Robert William Pettigrew (d. 1928), Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales;
By whose Executrices sold, Christie’s, London, 8 February 1929, lot 129, for 175 guineas, to Wise;
Magdalena Christina van den Honert (1899–1979), Blaricum, by 1932, and by descent to
Dr and Mrs P.L. Galjart, Soest, by 1984, until 1986;
With Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1986;
With Noortman Master Paintings, London and Maastricht, 6 January 1988;
From whom acquired by Eric Albada Jelgersma (1939–2018) and his wife Marie-Louise, Switzerland, by 1993;
His posthumous sale (‘Important Old Master Paintings from the Eric Albada Jelgersma Collection’), Christie’s, London, 6 December 2018, lot 12;
Where acquired by The Klesch Collection.
London, Guildhall, 1893;
London, Guildhall, Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School, 28 April – 25 July 1903, no. 185 (as Frans Hals and Lyster [sic], Jovial Comedians, 34½ x 29 in.; with its pendant, no. 193, The Health of the Troop, 34½ x 29 in.; both lent by Donaldson);
Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Co, Tentoonstelling van Oude Meesters, 1918, no. 7, repr. (as Singing Girls – Three girls in men’s clothing);
The Hague, Mauritshuis, long-term loan, 1932–46 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
The Hague, International Red Cross Headquarters, on loan (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Holländer des 17. Jahrhunderts, 4 November – 20 December 1953, no. 78 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Mostra di Pittura Olandese del Seicento, 4 January – 14 February 1954, no. 80, pl. 15 (lent by Ms van den Honert, Blaricum);
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; West Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, 18 March – 13 May; 8 June – 12 August; and 7 September – 8 November 1984, no. 61, pl. 18 (as c. 1629–31; lent by Mr and Mrs P.L. Galjart, The Netherlands);
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Judith Leyster: schilderes in een mannenwereld and Worcester Art Museum, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, 16 May – 22 August and 19 September – 5 December 1993, no. 5;
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Judith Leyster, 1609–1660, 21 June – 29 November 2009;
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Judith Leyster (1609–1660), de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd, 19 December 2009 – 9 May 2010;
São Paulo, MASP, Women’s Histories: Artists Before 1900, 23 August – 17 November 2019;
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, long-term loan, since 20 November 2023.
A.G. Temple, Catalogue of the Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School, exh. cat., Guildhall, London 1903, p. 148, no. 185 (as Frans Hals and Lyster [sic]);
‘The Dutch Exhibition at the Guildhall. Article I.—The Old Masters’, The Burlington Magazine, 2, no. 4, June 1903, pp. 52–55;
Frederik Muller & Co, Album ter herinnering aan de tentoonstelling van oude meesters, Amsterdam 1918, no. 7, reproduced;
Harms, ‘Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben and ihr Werk, III and IV’, Oud Holland, 44, 1927, pp. 88, 112, 145–47, 149, 154, 221, 275, fig. 8, and 237, no. 15;
G.D. Gratama, ‘Het Portret van Judith Leyster door Frans Hals’, Oud Holland, 47, 1930, pp. 71, 74, fig. 3;
Annual Report of the Mauritshuis, 1932, p. 29;
Annual Report of the Mauritshuis, 1946, p. 52;
Holländer des 17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat., Kunsthaus, Zurich, 1953, p. 49, no. 78;
Mostra di pittura olandese del seicento, exh. cat., Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1954, p. 62, no. 80;
S. Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols, London 1974, vol. III, p. 116, under L 2;
A. Sutherland Harris and L. Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550–1950, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976, p. 139, under no. 22;
F. Fox Hofrichter, ‘Judith Leyster’s ‘Self Portrait’: ‘Ut Pictura Poesis’, in Essays in Northern European Art. Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his Sixtieth Birthday, Doornspijk 1983, pp. 106–8 (as 1630);
P. Sutton, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, West Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1984, pp. 234–35, no. 61, pl. no. 18;
C. Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant in der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt 1987, p. 361, B1a);
F. Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 25, 34, 41–42, no. 9 and under no. 10, pl. III (as c. 1629);
J. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 1993, pp. 79, 83–84, 95, 96, 98–99, figs 42S and X, 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 106–7, figs 43H and N, 112 n. 19, 113 nn. 43, 49 and 56, 118, 130, under no. 2; 150–55, no. 5, repr. 151; 156, 161, under no. 6; 162, 165–66, under no. 7; 185, 187 n. 15, under no. 10; 198, under no. 12; 263, under nos 23 and 24; 266–68, under no. 25;
C. Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, exh. cat., Worcester and Haarlem 1993, pp. 150–55, no. 5;
F. Fox Hofrichter in Judith Leyster, 1609–1660, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2009, pp. 7, 8, 10, 13–14 and 15, repr. p. 6, fig. 9;
A. Tummers, Judith Leyster: de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder werd, exh. cat., Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 2009, pp. 15, 18, fig. 16;
A.K. Wheelock Jr., ‘Judith Leyster/ Self-Portrait/ c. 1630’, in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, NGA Online Editions, 2014, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/37003
C.D.M. Atkins, ‘The Last Drop (The Gay Cavalier) by Judith Leyster (cat. 440)’, in C.D.M. Atkins (ed.), The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works, Philadelphia 2018, pp. 600–2, 605–6 and 607–8, fig. 1;
E. Pinheiro in Women’s Histories, Feminist Histories, M. Leme, A. Pedrosa, I. Rjeille (eds), exh. cat., Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2019, pp. 122–23, fig. 46;
C. Grimm, Frans Hals and his Workshop, RKD Studies, The Hague 2024, under ‘1.10 A connection with Judith Leyster’, figs 110, 112, 114–15 (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/1-a-visit-to-the-workshop/110-a-connection-with-judith-leyster/); under ‘A4 Paintings created in Frans Hals’s Workshop; Genre Paintings’, no. A4.2.47a, fig. 3 (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/a4-paintings-created-frans-halss-workshop/a42-genre-paintings/a4244-a4258/); and under ‘B Documentary Workshop Replicas, Copies and Variants’, no. B2b (https://frans-hals-and-his-workshop.rkdstudies.nl/b-documentary-workshop-replicas-copies-and-variants/b1-b10/);
V. Treanor, ‘Portraits of the Artist’, in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, V. Treanor and F. Van Dam (eds), exh. cat., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, 2025, p. 42, fig. 8;
F. Fox Hofrichter, ‘Judith Leyster and the Art Market’, in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, exh. cat., Washington, D.C. and Ghent 2025, p. 233.
If you would like to use this image for educational purposes, please contact us.