Karikatuur van twee mannen en een vrouw die een ijsje eten 1825

This caricature of people enjoying ice cream was made around 1825 by Louis Léopold Boilly. The print's soft hues and delicate lines come from a technique called lithography, which involves drawing on a flat stone with a greasy crayon, then treating the stone so that ink adheres only to the drawn areas. Lithography allowed for relatively quick and inexpensive reproduction of images, making art more accessible to a wider audience. Here, Boilly captures a moment of everyday life, elevated– the almost sculptural treatment of the figures contrasts with the accessibility of the medium. Each figure has a unique reaction to their icy treat. The print is not just about the pleasure of consumption, but also the labor involved in producing and distributing these treats in a pre-industrial world, ice was a luxury, and the labor involved in harvesting and storing it was considerable. Boilly reminds us of the social and economic context of what we often take for granted.