Serveerster met kruiken in een herberg 1877

Willem Linnig the Younger created this etching, ‘Serving Girl with Pitchers in an Inn,’ in nineteenth-century Belgium. It shows a woman carrying pitchers across a simple, humble room; the low vantage point implies an artist drawing attention to the realities of working-class life. But we should remember that this image, like all others, is a constructed representation. The serving girl appears in a well-lit space, while the person at the window is in shadow. The artist is making a point about who is seen and who is not, using the space of the inn to suggest how society views its working class. Linnig was part of the art scene in Antwerp, shaped by academic training and the demands of the market. The “serving girl” is a type of genre scene often romanticized and this image is no exception. To truly understand this image, we might research the economy of Belgium, which relied on the working class. We might also consider the role of women in the workforce. Art history is a way of exploring not just what we see, but how social context shapes what is shown.