Review: A Light of Her Own

A Light of Her Own by Carrie Callaghan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a Light of Her Own, a historical fiction novel set largely in Dutch Haarlem during the 1600's, is about the lives of Dutch painter Judith Leyster and Maria de Grebber, also a painter and daughter of Franz Pietersz de Grebber. Leyster was one of the first women painters to join the Haarlem Guild after the Reformation. (There are some indications that Sara van Baalbergen was the first woman accepted into the Haarlem Guild in 1631. The "Sara" in this book is not that Sara.)

Judith Leyster and Maria de Grebber make for interesting, contrasting characters and, though there is no historical indication the two women were as close as portrayed in this book, they certainly knew one another since Judith studied with Franz de Grebber. The de Grebber family was Catholic, while Leyster was, like the majority of the Dutch after the Reformation, Protestant. While possibly disadvantaged due to his faith, de Grebber was nevertheless a member of the Guild from 1600, and his studio produced his work along with that of his three children Pieter, Albert and Maria without their needing to separately apply to the Guild to be able to legally sell their work. Judith Leyster, however, was determined to form her own studio and in this novel we see her potential path during times in which few women took up a Guild profession.

For me one of the saddest facts is that Leyster, M. de Grebber, and van Baalbergen (of whose work none is known to have survived to the present day) all married and seemed to have produced little art after they began to have children. Leyster, who married artist Jan Miense Molenaer, had much of her surviving work misattributed to her husband, following her death in 1660 at the age of 50, until the mid-1800's. Her unique monogram JL* (the star being a reference to the Dutch Leyster/Leister which means Lead Star, as in the North Star used for navigation) led to the reattribution of 39 of her surviving works. (For comparison, that is more than have survived of Johannes Vermeer's work!) Leyster's dynamic style (for the era in which she lived) resulted in one of her paintings being mistaken for that of her contemporary Franz Hals, with whom she may also have studied. Upon discerning her signature, many more of Leyster's works were rediscovered. Fewer paintings attributed to Maria de Grebber have survived. She also married an artist, though not a painter.

This is a lovely novel that allows you to imagine the art, life and world that Judith Leyster and Maria de Grebber lived in. While being a female painter in this era was not easy (if you didn't come from a Guild family like de Grebber did), it is notable that there were quite a few women painters actively working in the Netherlands in this era, in contrast to that which you see in countries like France, Spain or England in later centuries, even during the so-called Age of Enlightenment.

With its gentle pace, this book should appeal to those who enjoy the merging of art and historical fiction.

Self-Portrait, ~ Judith Leyster, 1633

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from Amberjack Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

View all my reviews