The Last Drop

Judith Leyster painted The Last Drop around 1639, a genre scene depicting a skeleton holding an hourglass and candle while a drunken young man raises a final drink — a vanitas subject dressed in the genre format of the drinking scene. The combination of lively genre observation and memento mori moralizing was characteristic of Haarlem painting in this period, and Leyster deploys it with a wit and compositional confidence that reflects her independent master status within the guild. The skeleton's appearance behind the oblivious drinker creates the classic vanitas contrast between the pleasures of the moment and the certainty of death, rendered not with solemn gravity but with the sardonic humor that was the Dutch tradition's characteristic mode of moral commentary.

The animated figure of the drinker and the looming skeleton are rendered with Leyster's confident, Hals-influenced brushwork, the candlelit scene creating dramatic shadows that enhance the moral message.