Nieuwe haven en Knolhaven te Dordrecht 1768

Curator: This delicate engraving from 1768, found in the Rijksmuseum collection, presents "Nieuwe haven en Knolhaven te Dordrecht". Editor: It's lovely. The fine lines create such a tranquil scene. I’m immediately drawn to the soft rendering of light reflecting on the water; there is an overall feeling of quiet prosperity here. Curator: As a historian, what strikes me is how this cityscape reinforces the powerful merchant class of Dordrecht at that time. The port scenes like this would have been deliberately circulated to convey civic pride. Editor: Yes, but who is this 'pride' for? We see only privileged figures strolling, looking onto their docks and ships; this pride comes at the expense of laborers, anonymous folks made invisible through composition. I would be curious how class affected urbanism and shaped access to spaces like the harbors that this artwork portrays. Curator: True, but you cannot overlook the context of printmaking; consider that this would have been distributed amongst burghers and local elites. It performs an explicit social function reinforcing the status quo of the time, as representations often do. Editor: It almost reads as an aspirational lifestyle advertisement. I wonder what the lived experiences of the subjects depicted in this illustration actually consisted of and I wish the artwork allowed the space to delve deeper into it. How did they conceptualize their gendered and racial identities? This single angle offered by the artwork is a flattened and simplified depiction of a world I want to excavate. Curator: By emphasizing its role as a crafted object commissioned within a specific socio-economic and historical context, we realize a complex understanding emerges when we avoid looking at the scene through solely modern, or aesthetic lenses. Editor: Indeed, viewing historical artwork through an intersectional lens allows us to unravel some very important social, political, and artistic themes.