Steiger met visserschuiten 1852

Curator: Welcome. Before us hangs Willem Gruyter jr.’s “Steiger met visserschuiten,” created in 1852. The Rijksmuseum collection catalogues it as a genre painting rendered in watercolor. What is your immediate impression? Editor: There’s a subdued stillness. A limited palette; soft browns and blues give it a gentle, almost melancholy air. It feels intimate in scale. Curator: I find it evocative of a specific time, and specifically who had the ability to access images that evoked this kind of feeling and emotion in 1852. Genre painting, like this, gave entry into the everyday lives of the working class, with those representations typically enjoyed by the leisured classes. How might this perspective influence our appreciation? Editor: It's fascinating how even in its stillness, it documents the means of production—the boats themselves. I'm drawn to the textures implied by the materials, the woven basket against the smooth wood, the rough planks of the pier...you can almost smell the salt air and see the worn hands that worked those boats. Curator: Absolutely. We see here a representation of labor from a remove. Are the windmills in the background purely aesthetic, or do they speak to the broader forces shaping the landscape and the lives of these fishers? Were there perhaps particular policies about who got to fish, and where, being decided? Editor: The windmills in the distance suggest a reliance on natural power, the landscape is entirely co-opted and adapted by the Dutch. It speaks to a community interwoven with both its immediate tools and its surrounding environment. We are left considering labor’s value through the ages. Curator: It certainly provokes contemplation of the intertwined lives of people and place, mediated, perhaps, through an artist’s distant gaze. This provides us the vantage point to address inequity and access, through time and space. Editor: Yes, it leaves you thinking about how the basics of human existence play out. Even through this single watercolor, the ripples are significant.