Twee boerenhuizen met een pijp rokende man c. 1654 - 1720

Richard Adam created this small etching of two farmhouses with a pipe-smoking man. Born in 1644, Adam lived during a time of significant socio-economic stratification in Europe. Here, Adam depicts a scene that reflects the quietude and simplicity of rural life, yet is subtly underscored by the realities of class and labor. A man, seemingly a farmer or peasant, sits smoking contentedly in the foreground. The labor that his class performs is masked by the picturesque charm of the thatched roof cottages and verdant trees. There is an emotional contrast between the visual appeal of the landscape and the unromantic, daily labor of the working class. "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible," Paul Klee once said. Adam’s landscape asks us to contemplate the lives and experiences of those whose labor is easily aestheticized but rarely understood.