Grote groep mensen in een park c. 1820 - 1841

Jean-Baptiste Madou made this print of a large group of people in a park in Belgium in the first half of the 19th century. It’s a scene of leisure, but also one of social display. Madou's lithograph presents us with a slice of bourgeois life, carefully orchestrated within the manicured landscape of the park. The way the figures are dressed, their postures, and even the presence of dogs on leashes, all speak to a culture deeply invested in social codes and class distinctions. Leisure becomes a performance, a way of signaling one's place within the social hierarchy. In order to truly understand this image, we need to investigate archives and visual sources that tell us about fashion, social etiquette, and urban planning in 19th-century Belgium. We can investigate the institutional history of leisure, and the history of public parks. By doing so, we appreciate how this seemingly innocent scene is in fact rich with social meaning. Art like this helps us to see how cultural practices are tied to power relations.