The Jolly Toper

In 1629 a young woman in Haarlem signed two paintings with a monogram that read J and L beside a small star, a play on her name, Leyster, which suggests a lodestar. This grinning man raising his tankard is one of them. He is Pekelharing, a stock drunkard from the comic stage of the day, whose name means salt herring, the briny Dutch snack that leaves you desperate for a drink. For a long time the picture hung in museums as a Frans Hals, and it was only in 1927 that a researcher spotted the star and gave it back to Leyster. She was in her early twenties when she painted it.