Lot 17
Studio of Judith Leyster(Haarlem 1609-1660 Heemstede)The Lute Player
3 December 2025, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£7,000 - £10,000
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Studio of Judith Leyster (Haarlem 1609-1660 Heemstede)
The Lute Player
oil on panel
50 x 37.2cm (19 11/16 x 14 5/8in).
oil on panel
50 x 37.2cm (19 11/16 x 14 5/8in).
Footnotes
Provenance
M. le Beurnonville, Paris, 9-16 May 1881, lot 305 (ff 10,200, attributed to Frans Hals)
With Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris (according to a seal on the reverse)
R. W. P. de Vries, Amsterdam, 3 June 1908, lot 543
Albert Lehman, Georges Petit, Paris, 12-13 June 1925, lot 259
with Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York (possibly sold 10 June 1954 for F 1,600,000)
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 12 December 1984, lot 221 (as Follower of Judith Leyster)
Sale, Phillips, London, 11 December, 1990, lot 37 (as Judith Leyster), where purchased by the present owner's father
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, 'Judith Leyster', in Jahrbuch der Königlichen Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, vol. 14, 1893, pp. 197-8
J. Harms, 'Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben und Ihr Werk', in Oud Holland, vol. 44, 1927, p. 235, no. 7
F. Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster. A Woman Painter in Holland's Golden Age, Doornspijk, 1989, p. 39, cat. no. 4, ill. pl. 4 (as Judith Leyster)
The present work is closely related to Leyster's The Serenade now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (object no. SK-A-2326) of 1629. The Serenade, along with the Jolly Drinker, also in the Rijksmuseum (object no. SK-A-1685), are Leyster's earliest dated works and are from the years before she was accepted as a master painter in the Guild of Saint Luke, Haarlem, in 1633, very likely the first woman to achieve this.