Man en vrouw pratend bij een hek 1650

Harmen ter Borch sketched "Man en vrouw pratend bij een hek" using pen in grey ink, probably in the 1660s. Ter Borch lived during the Dutch Golden Age, a period marked by unprecedented economic prosperity. This tiny sketch is replete with the visual markers of gender and class. We see a man, perhaps a traveling merchant, with a walking stick, while the woman stands by a fence with a basket. Are they equals? What is the nature of their encounter? The Dutch Golden Age was also an age of strict social hierarchies. Costume served as an immediate signifier of one’s place in the world. What narratives might be buried in the simplicity of this sketch, a medium that itself was undergoing something of a boom in the 17th century? What anxieties did these people hold as the tides of commerce lapped at the shores of identity?