Portret van Jean Joseph Thonissen 1839 - 1909

Editor: So, this is Auguste Danse's "Portret van Jean Joseph Thonissen", dating roughly from 1839 to 1909, currently housed at the Rijksmuseum. It's a pencil drawing and it has this delicate, almost fragile quality because of the lightness of the medium on all that blank space. What catches your eye about it? Curator: The sparseness of the portrait set against that vast, empty paper, is very interesting to me. In many ways, this mirrors the changing role of the portrait itself during that era. It moved from purely celebrating power and status towards… well, what *was* Thonissen’s public role? Editor: Based on some brief searching he was a Belgian jurist and professor. Curator: Exactly! So the drawing then presents Thonissen in a public *intellectual* context. The pencil medium is far less ostentatious than oils. It lacks the trappings of grand commissions from centuries before, and lends itself more to a democratized image of professional middle class. Editor: So you’re saying the very *choice* of pencil, compared to, say, oil paint, shifts the whole meaning of the portrait and the status of the person? Curator: Precisely! The medium influences the message, subtly. It is less about lavish representation and more about… accessibility. Academic art of the time aimed for realistic, relatable likeness, even in drawings. How might this realism relate to new ideas about citizen power? Editor: I hadn’t considered the politics of *materiality* before, especially with something seemingly simple like a pencil drawing. Curator: It prompts us to think critically about the public presentation of the professional class in a rapidly evolving society. That seemingly "simple" drawing contains entire worldviews! Editor: Thank you! I will look at things in the frame differently going forward.