Self-Portrait by Judith Leyster, painted around 1630. Oil on canvas. The painted surface is about 2 and a half feet high by just over 2 feet wide.
This description is about 2 and a half minutes long.
The artist is shown from about the waist up, sitting in front of a painting on an easel. The pale-skinned white woman occupies the left half of the composition, and the picture she paints, on the right, shows a smiling man playing a violin.
The background is a shadowy grayish color.
Let’s begin by describing the artist, and then move on to the canvas she’s painting.
Her chair faces the canvas to the right, but she twists her upper body to look at us directly. Her right arm, holding a long, thin paintbrush, rests on the back of her chair.
She has pink cheeks and brown eyes under dark brows. Her pink lips are parted with the corners lifted in a slight smile. Her dark brown hair is pulled back from her brow and mostly hidden by a starched white cap. The stiff, white ruff around her neck has a lacy edge. It stands out from her neck as flat as a dinner plate and reaches to her shoulders.
Under the ruff, she wears a black bodice over a long-sleeved plum-colored dress; transparent, lace-edged cuffs extend back along her forearm.
On her lap is an oval shaped palette: the thumb of her left hand hooks through the hole in the palette, creating a fist with her fingers. In the same hand, she clutches about twenty paintbrushes and a white cloth.
Let’s turn now to the canvas on the right. The foot of the canvas is hidden behind the artist’s palette and the top extends up to the level of her forehead. The right edge of the canvas is cut off by the right side of the composition. Above the canvas, the top of the easel angles into the top right corner of the composition. The canvas she paints shows a standing, light-skinned man, laughing as he plays a violin. He wears a powder blue suit and floppy cap. The background behind him is ochre brown.
