Cavaleiro de pé

This is the only painting by Judith Leyster whose history can be traced as far back as the 18th century, and for most of that time nobody knew it was hers. George III bought it in 1762 as a work by Jordaens. In the 1880s it was reassigned to Frans Hals, and it sat in Hals catalogues for decades before scholars downgraded it to a mere study, and finally recognised Leyster's hand. She made it around 1630 in Haarlem, where she was one of very few women running a workshop of her own. The standing man is copied from Hals's swaggering full-length portrait of the cloth merchant Willem van Heythuizen, reduced here to a brisk working study of a pose.