Group of peasant girls 

Curator: Before us, we have "Group of Peasant Girls," a pencil drawing by Johann Jakob Hoff held here at the Städel Museum. It's, well, let's say, preliminary. Editor: Ghostly! A little ghostly gathering. They emerge like faded memories from the page, don't they? A quiet scene, very subtly sketched. Almost tentative. Curator: Yes, Hoff has captured a genre scene, depicting women and children. Note the headdresses which suggest a very specific cultural or regional identity – peasant women perhaps resting, mothers with children. It invites reflection on social roles. Editor: Absolutely. I get the feeling this might be part of a larger tableau – perhaps an ethnographic study? A record? Because there’s an interesting balance struck: the sketchiness gives it informality but it also makes the whole scene, with each figure drawn with some attentiveness, slightly performative. I’m curious about the gazes – none really meet ours. They’re internalized, separate. Curator: Exactly! These drawings often acted as visual archives, documenting folk costumes, customs. The level of finish wasn’t crucial. It was about preserving a visual record within evolving social structures. A record created and exhibited to audiences largely of a higher social status. Editor: Do you feel there's a tension in that approach? Observing, even attempting to record, lives so different, creating something like art? Curator: Well, tension is inherent to observing any subject from a point of different access, I'd suggest. Artists operate, or operated at that time, often embedded within those socio-economic divides. Think of Courbet and his social realism. These "snapshots" were consumed differently then. Now, of course, we have new frameworks with which to look critically. Editor: That is very true. I appreciate the ambiguity that it raises still for the modern observer – because for me as an artist I want to dive deeper than this sketch, beyond its implied documentary interest into these women’s interior lives, I want to ask, “What were they thinking?” Curator: A sentiment, I suppose, that proves the limitations inherent in just “archiving” lives. A question perhaps for another drawing, or indeed another exhibition. Editor: It would indeed! Thanks for shedding more light on these wispy apparitions for me today!