Judith Jans Leyster (c. 1609–  1660)

• Was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
• She painted genre works, portraits and still lifes.
• Her first known signed work is dated 1629.
• By 1633, she was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke.
• In 1636, Leyster married  a painter Jan Miense Molenaer.
• Most of Leyster's dated works antedate her marriage and are dated between 1629 and 1635.
• There are few known pieces by her painted after 1635.
• Leyster may have worked collaboratively with her husband as well.
• She died in 1660, aged 50.
• She signed her works with a monogram of her initials JL with a star attached.
• Although well-known during her lifetime and esteemed by her contemporaries, Leyster and her work were largely forgotten after her death.
• She was rediscovered in 1893, when a painting admired for over a century as a work of Frans Hals was recognized as hers.
• The displayed painting is a crop from: Judith Jans Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1630.
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