Studier af vaskende italienske kvinder 1834

Martinus Rørbye sketched these studies of Italian women washing clothes in pencil on paper. We don't know precisely when it was made, but it was likely sometime in the 1830s. Rørbye, a Danish Golden Age painter, would have encountered such scenes during his travels. Picturesque scenes of everyday life in southern Europe were popular subjects for artists in the North, fitting into a Romantic vision of unindustrialized cultures. We might ask ourselves: what was the public role of such images? What ideas about gender, labor, and national identity were being circulated through such scenes? Was this an innocent sketch, or a circulation of cultural stereotypes? An art historian might research the travel patterns of artists at the time, scrutinize popular illustrated magazines, and compare Rørbye's sketch to other similar works to better understand the artist's intent and the cultural context in which it was made. Only in this way can we properly understand how the image creates meaning.