Out of the shadows

Ghent exhibition shows 'old masters were women too'

- Jennifer Rankin Ghent

Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch Golden Age, was about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she exudes cheerful confidence.

Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side.

This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a painters’ guild in Haarlem, proclaimed her arrival as an established artist. It was one of the first self-portraits by an artist in the Dutch Republic.

Celebrated in her lifetime, Leyster was quickly forgotten after her death. A posthumous inventory attributed some of her paintings to “the wife of the deceased”, referring to her artist husband, Jan Miense Molenaer. Then she disappeared. Her works were attributed to Frans Hals, other male contemporaries, or simply “unknown master”.