Moeder die haar kind vlooit, bekend als ‘de Moedertaak' 1861

Christiaan Lodewijk van Kesteren created this print, "Moeder die haar kind vlooit, bekend als ‘de Moedertaak'," using etching and possibly other techniques. The entire image is built up from tiny, deliberate marks. Look closely, and you can see how areas of shadow are created with dense clusters of lines, while lighter areas have fewer marks. This is incredibly labor-intensive. The artist would have slowly and methodically built up the image on the plate, line by painstaking line. Consider how this meticulous, almost devotional process of creation relates to the subject matter. This is the work of a mother, attending to her child with similar patience and care. In both cases, there is a strong sense of attention and devotion, a real labour of love, which, in the 19th century, would have been regarded as women’s work. The print celebrates a domestic interior, showing an intimate scene that is charged with cultural significance. Ultimately, understanding the labor and the values embedded in both the making and the image, reveals a lot about the society that produced it.