Figuren bij een boerderij aan een beek waarover een houten brug 1829 - 1879

Ildephonse Stocquart made this print of a farm scene with figures in the mid-19th century. The image is small, and rendered in great detail; a little world in monochrome. It’s fair to say that Stocquart was working in the shadow of the Barbizon school, and those artists' valorization of peasant life. The way he’s structured the composition, with the figures small in relation to the landscape, is very much in line with their thinking. This feels like an attempt to represent rural life, and those who live it, as authentic and timeless. We might ask ourselves whether this image comments on Belgian social structures of its time. If we want to know more about the social and institutional context of this print, we can look to exhibition reviews from the period, to understand how Stocquart’s images were received. What did they mean to his contemporaries? Ultimately, art’s meaning is contingent on its social and institutional context.