Description
Alongside tavern scenes and intimate domestic genre scenes, Judith Leyster frequently painted scenes of musical performances. In The Concert, Leyster precisely depicts details such as the Baroque violin (made without a chin rest and generally held against the chest), as well as the woman’s songbook.
The figures shown here are probably portraits. Her characters will tell us about violins, lutes, luthiers and exotic woods. And several Dutch Baroque musicians will provide the soundtrack for the painting.
Based on similar figures in Leyster’s other paintings, scholars have tentatively identified the singer as the artist herself, the violinist as her husband, and the lute player as a family friend. The trio’s members, like all musicians, must work together as a unit, “in concert,” leading some writers to theorize that this scene symbolizes the virtue of harmony.
Leyster frequently placed her subjects against a simple, monochromatic background. This ensures that nothing distracts from the figures, all of whom are shown in the midst of various actions (bowing, plucking strings or keeping time). The steep angle at which the lute is held adds depth to the composition. The musicians’ varied gazes offer viewers different focal points.
Judith Leyster is the most important female painter of the so-called Dutch Golden Age. At the age of 24 (1633), she was admitted to the Haarlem painters’ guild, no easy feat for a woman painter, even one with uncommon talent. Despite the recognition she received during her lifetime, after her death she would be “forgotten” by history until the late 19th century, as her work would be mistaken for that of Frans Hals and other painters.