Ontwerp voor wandschildering in de Beurs van Berlage: vrouw die bukt om een steen op te rapen 1869 - 1925

This is a design for a mural made by Antoon Derkinderen, probably around the turn of the century in the Netherlands. It’s a preparatory drawing in pencil of a woman stooping to pick up a stone. The image was made for the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, designed by H.P. Berlage. The Stock Exchange was intended as a monument for the modern city, and Derkinderen was one of several artists commissioned to decorate its interior. Notice the way Derkinderen has depicted her, draped in classical robes, and posed with the grace of a figure from antiquity. The mural series was intended to represent the historical roots of labor and trade, of which the Stock Exchange was a modern outgrowth. The woman and the stone, however, have a more ambivalent symbolism: is this a reference to a woman about to be stoned, from the Bible? Or does the stone symbolize the basic tools of labor? For me, the drawing underscores the important point that art is always embedded in social, political, and institutional structures, and that to interpret it we need to be alive to its historical context.