Soldaten an einem Wirtshaus 

Thomas Rowlandson made "Soldaten an einem Wirtshaus" – Soldiers at an Inn – a watercolor and ink drawing sometime around the late 18th or early 19th century. Consider the narratives of mobility and displacement that punctuate this image. Rowlandson, a prominent caricaturist, captures a scene of soldiers encamped outside a public house, likely during the Napoleonic Wars. The work reveals a society embroiled in conflict, with the working class conscripted into military service, their lives often reduced to a cycle of movement, uncertainty, and dependency on transient spaces like inns. There’s a sense of communal disruption as military endeavors encroach upon civilian life and the local economy. Although the drawing seems simple, it encourages a dialogue about the complex intersections of class, war, and society. The seemingly benign tavern scene becomes a stage for the performance of societal anxieties and the quiet tragedies of everyday life.