De kwakzalver 1913

Christiaan Maria Dewald’s "De kwakzalver" has a muted palette and a tight focus on the activity of the town square. It’s all about capturing the feeling of being there. I wonder what Dewald was thinking while making this piece? There's such narrative and humor, like in an early cartoon. The guy on the donkey, the one in the wheelbarrow... It makes me think of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who was also really invested in the lives of everyday people. The physical, tonal qualities really impact how we read this work. The texture, the layering of the marks, they build up an emotional weight. It’s as though Dewald is in conversation with Bruegel. He must have seen his paintings and was inspired to create something that spoke to his own time. That is what is so fascinating about painting: artists are constantly building on one another’s ideas and approaches. One person experiments, and another takes that idea and pushes it further. Painting becomes this embodied expression that embraces ambiguity and welcomes multiple readings.