A Fool Holding a Jug, known as ‘The Jolly Drinker’

Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 11 horizontal by 13 vertical threads per centimetre, has been glue-lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is clearly visible on the left and right, and shallow cusping is visible at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, warm white ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of lead white and iron oxides.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front, leaving reserves for the figure, feather and tablecloth in the background. The face and hands were constructed over a warm, flesh-coloured undermodelling. The clothing was applied in grey shades with open, dynamic zigzag strokes, leaving the ground exposed at times, and was then modelled with deep red glazing for the shadows. Reserves for the pipe, ember pot and their shadows were left in the light green tablecloth, which consists of yellow and azurite. The other still-life elements were then added. A second application of cooler grey background paint was used to adjust the form of the head, particularly along the ear, and the lower outline at right. The piping of the coat, the feather, embers, opaque blue cuffs, part of the jug and the fingers of the figure’s left hand were then inserted. The piping was executed with pink and white paints and a red glaze dabbed wet in wet. Black accents were added in the final stage. Compositional changes include the size of the table, the ember pot and the jug (all three were planned smaller in reserve), and the shape and position of the figure’s left hand.
Gwen Tauber, 2022

E. Hendriks and K. Groen, ‘Judith Leyster: A Technical Examination of her Work’, in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 93-114, esp. pp. 93, 95-98, 100-06, 110, note 1, 113, note 49

Fair. There is extensive abrasion in the thinly painted shadows, costume and tablecloth.

…; sale, Mme Vve R.-V., Paris (M. Delestre), 24 April 1890, no. 17, as J. Hals (‘Le Joyeux Buveur. Assis près d’une table recouverte d’un tapis et tourney vers la droite, il est coiffé d’une toque noire orné d’une longue plume et montre en riant un cruchon de bière qu’il vient de vider. Sur la table, un brasero, une pipe et du tabac dans un papier. Ce tableau […] était anciennement attribué à Jan Steen, mais cette attribution ne concorde pas avec le monogramme qui se voit sur cette toile et qui serait celui de J. Hals, fils de Franz. Toile. Haut, 88 cent, large, 83 cent.’);…; from the dealer Franz Kleinberger, Paris, fl. 4,500, to the museum, with the support of the Rembrandt Association, January 1897; on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, since 1960

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1685

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Like Judith Leyster’s other dated painting of 1629, The Serenade,⁶⁶SK-A-2326. this Jolly Drinker is a single-figure composition that she probably derived indirectly from the Utrecht Caravaggisti by way of Frans Hals. The subject of the outlandishly dressed tippler was popularized by that group of artists in the early 1620s, a prime example being Gerard van Honthorst’s 1623 Merry Violinist with Wineglass in the Rijksmuseum.⁷⁷SK-A-180. Leyster’s immediate model, however, was more likely a picture from around 1628-29 by Frans Hals, which on the basis of the inscription on a print after it by Jonas Suyderhoef has been identified as Monsieur Pekelharing, a stock character in contemporary farces.⁸⁸Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; for Hals’s painting and Suyderhoef’s print see Slive in S. Slive et al., Frans Hals, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Royal Academy of Arts)/Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) 1989-90, pp. 216-19, no. 31 (ill.). The name Pekelharing literally means ‘pickled herring’, the consumption of which causes unquenchable thirst,⁹⁹See especially G.J.M. Weber, ‘’t Lof van den Pekelharingh: Von alltäglichen und absonderlichen Heringsstilleben’, Oud Holland 101 (1987), pp. 126-40, esp. pp. 134-35. which the clownish figure in both Hals’s and Leyster’s paintings attempts to slake with beer from an open jug, and based on their ruddy cheeks and broad grins they are thoroughly enjoying themselves in the process. Seventeenth-century Dutch farcical characters were not standardized in the manner of the commedia dell’arte,¹⁰¹⁰Slive in S. Slive et al., Frans Hals, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Royal Academy of Arts)/Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) 1989-90, p. 216. which explains the different costumes worn by the men in both pictures. The baggy grey coat with violet piping ending in tassels and large buttons of Leyster’s drinker differs from the red clothing of Hals’s Pekelharing, but both would have been recognized as fool’s dress.

Twice as large as The Serenade and painted on canvas instead of panel, The Jolly Drinker is executed on the same kind of support and is on a similar scale as Hals’s Pekelharing and his other single-figure compositions from the 1620s.¹¹¹¹The Jolly Drinker has been assumed to be Leyster’s largest picture; see E. Hendriks and K. Groen, ‘Judith Leyster: A Technical Examination of her Work’, in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 93-114, esp. p. 93. Judging from her extant oeuvre, Leyster preferred wooden supports to canvas. Leyster also followed his example by showing her drinker on a diagonal against a blank wall. And, of course, the relatively broad brushwork, although tighter than in The Serenade, is an emulation of Hals’s.

The motif of a beret with a long red ostrich feather may have been derived from another work by Hals, Young Man Holding a Skull of around 1626-28.¹²¹²London, The National Gallery; illustrated in S. Slive et al., Frans Hals, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Royal Academy of Arts)/Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) 1989-90, p. 209. The ‘symbol par excellence of frivolity’ as Van Thiel has put it,¹³¹³P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity and Unrestrainedness of Our Age’, Simiolus 24 (1996), pp. 182-200, esp. p. 191. the feather in Leyster’s painting is the perfect complement to the fool’s costume. She may have included it not only because it is a striking device in its own right but also because of its association with the concept of vanity in Hals’s Young Man Holding a Skull and in the model for his picture, an engraving by Lucas van Leyden.¹⁴¹⁴The print is from around 1519; J.P. Filedt Kok, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Lucas van Leyden, ed. G. Luijten, Roosendaal 1996, p. 156, no. 174.

In addition to being a hardened drinker, Leyster’s figure, unlike Hals’s Pekelharing, is a tabaksuiger (sucker of tobacco). His Gouda pipe and tobacco are shown next to him. Smoking paraphernalia first appear in Haarlem still-life paintings by Pieter Claesz and Floris van Schooten in the 1620s.¹⁵¹⁵As pointed out in the context of Leyster’s painting by Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, p. 132. Not only the placement of the table parallel to the picture plane in The Jolly Drinker but also the way in which the two wood chips illusionistically protrude over the edge of it into the viewer’s space indicate that Leyster was abreast of this new development. Smoking and drinking were considered almost interchangeable vices by doctors and moralists at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and both sins were associated with vanity, not least by Haarlem moralists around the time Leyster painted The Jolly Drinker.¹⁶¹⁶E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, p. 56; De Jongh in E. de Jongh and G. Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands 1550-1700, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1997, p. 359. For Haarlem publications on the effects of addiction to alcohol and tobacco see Biesboer in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 535-36. An example is Petrus Scriverius’s 1628 Latin poem Saturnalia de tabaco, which was translated into Dutch in 1630 and given a title page decorated with a skull wearing a winged hourglass and with Gouda pipes sticking out of its mouth.¹⁷¹⁷For an illustration of this title page see E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, p. 55. The Latin inscription beneath the image reads in translation: ‘The symbol of life is smoke and all human things are but the breath of a herb. In a word, nothing!’¹⁸¹⁸‘Haec vitae imago fumus, atq. herbae vapos Humana cuncta: et, verbo ut absolvam, nihil.’

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

E. Jacobsen, ‘Zur Judith Leyster’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 18 (1895), p. 435; J. Harms, ‘Judith Leyster: Ihr Leben und ihr Werk’, Oud Holland 44 (1927), pp. 88-96, 112-26, 145-54, 221-42, 275-79, esp. pp. 116, 118-19, 235, no. 9; F.F. Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pp. 15, 23, 25, 26, 39-40, no. 5; Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 130-35, no. 2; Biesboer in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 535-36, with earlier literature; Van Muijden and Tummers in A. Tummers (ed.), De Gouden Eeuw viert feest, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum) 2011-12, p. 100, no. 22; T. Weststeijn, ‘Een feest voor het oog: Lachen en levensechtheid in de zeventiende-eeuwse kunsttheorie’, in A. Tummers (ed.), De Gouden Eeuw viert feest, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum) 2011-12, pp. 20-27, esp. pp. 26-27

1903, p. 161, no. 1455; 1934, p. 166, no. 1455; 1976, p. 346, no. A 1685

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Judith Leyster, A Fool Holding a Jug, known as ‘The Jolly Drinker’, 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7470