| A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Judith Leyster |
| Year | about 1635 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 60 cm× 49 cm(24 in× 19 in) |
| Location | National Gallery, London |
A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel is a 1635 oil painting by Judith Leyster that is now in the National Gallery, London.
There have been various interpretations of Judith Leyster's A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel by different scholars. Some, such as Neil McLaren, have argued that it represents the Dutch proverb "Een aal bij de staart hebben" (or "to hold an eel by the tail") meaning that you do not get to hold onto something just because you have it. [1] This moralistic interpretation is supported, Cynthia Kortenhorst-Von Bogendorff Rupprath says, by the eye contact with the viewer made by the little girl in the painting as she wags her finger. [2] Other interpretations include allusions to other Dutch proverbs as well as the popular pastime in seventeenth-century Dutch festivals or kermis of katknuppelen, the bludgeoning of cats. The depiction of children torturing or being scratched by cats was a popular one at this time in the Netherlands, and may allude to the Dutch proverbs "Hij doet kattekwaad", which translates literally to "he does the mischief of the cat", or "'t Liep uit op katjesspel", the literal translation of which is "it ends in the game of the cat", which relate to mischievous or arguing children. [2]
Leyster's husband, Jan Miense Molenaer, included such an image in his group portrait "The Ruychaver-van der Laen Family" (c. 1629–30) in which a boy holding a clawing cat by the tail torments a girl by dangling it near her; she shies away tending to her scratched hand. These roles are reversed in Leyster's painting where it is the girl pulling the cat's tail, tragedy has not yet struck, and the girl's eye contact and shaking finger leave it perhaps up to the viewer to interpret what result her actions will have. [2] Some scholars have also interpreted the eel being held as a kat aal or cat-eel, which were fed to cats as they were not worth eating. [3] In this case it would be the boy who had enticed the cat into his grasp and he would be getting what was coming to him. [2] Yet another interpretation is that the girl is waving her finger to make the viewers feel that she is reprimanding her brother for teasing the cat, and she is thereby distracting their attention from her own misbehaviour, which is pulling the cat's tail, making it nervous, and about to scratch. There are other examples of Dutch paintings as well as poems, such as Jacob Cats in his introductory section of his book Kinderspel or Children's Games, which use children as a motif both to mock and to preach morals to adults, and Frima Fox Hofrichter says this painting falls into that category. [4]
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Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.
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Jan Miense Molenaer, was a Dutch Golden Age genre painter whose style was a precursor to Jan Steen's work during Dutch Golden Age painting. He shared a studio with his wife, Judith Leyster, also a genre painter, as well as a portraitist and painter of still-life. Both Molenaer and Leyster may have been pupils of Frans Hals.
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The Fingernail Test is an oil-on-canvas Dutch Golden Age painting that has been attributed to either Frans Hals or Judith Leyster, painted in 1626 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Self-portrait by Judith Leyster is a Dutch Golden Age painting in oils now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. It was offered in 1633 as a masterpiece to the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. It was attributed for centuries to Frans Hals and was only properly attributed to Judith Leyster upon acquisition by the museum in 1949. The style is indeed comparable to that of Hals, Haarlem's most famous portraitist.
The Merry Trio is an oil painting created in 1629 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Judith Leyster. It is now in a private collection. It was considered a work by Frans Hals until 1903.
The Last Drop is a c. 1629 oil painting by Judith Leyster in the John G. Johnson collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was regarded as a work by Frans Hals until 1903, when it was noticed that it is signed 'JL*' on the tankard.
A Youth with a Jug is a 1633 oil painting by Judith Leyster currently in a private collection.
Young man playing the lute is an oil painting executed in 1624 by the Dutch Golden Age artist Judith Leyster. It is now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, and is a period copy of the same subject by Frans Hals. It was acquired by the museum as a painting by Frans Hals and was skipped by the researcher Juliane Harms in 1927, being finally attributed to Leyster by Seymour Slive in 1974.
Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight is a "fancy painting" by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). The painting is displayed at the Kenwood House Public Museum, located in the London Hampstead area.
A Game of Tric-Trac is a painting by Judith Leyster from 1630.
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