Man met hoed leunend op een stok 1841

Jacques Van Gingelen made this print of a man with a hat leaning on a stick sometime in the first half of the 19th century. The image depicts what appears to be a working-class man in simple clothing. Van Gingelen was working during the Dutch Golden Age when there was a burgeoning middle class and a growing interest in genre scenes depicting everyday life. This interest was driven in part by the rise of a merchant class who commissioned works for their homes rather than for churches or aristocratic palaces. Prints such as this one provided a way to distribute images widely and cheaply, and they helped to solidify social identities. The figure seems to be from the countryside, his dress and posture hinting at a life of manual labor. But is Van Gingelen presenting an idealized image, or making a comment on rural poverty? To learn more, we can look at other prints and paintings from the period, as well as social histories that explore the economic conditions of the Netherlands at that time. Art, after all, does not exist in a vacuum.