Portret van Pierre François de Noter (de Jonge) c. 1800 - 1900

This is an undated portrait of Pierre François de Noter the Younger, made by an artist known only through a monogram, ML. Small portraits like this one were often produced as keepsakes, allowing families to circulate images of their members as signs of social connection. The sitter’s fashionable cap tells us that this image was likely made in the early 19th century. This was a period of social and political upheaval across Europe, as older forms of aristocratic authority were being challenged by new forces of democratic revolution and industrial capitalism. The sitter may have affected this particular style as a marker of his political sympathies. The proliferation of portraiture at this time reflects a wider democratization of art, as new technologies of printmaking allowed images to be reproduced and disseminated more widely than ever before. As historians, we can learn more about this image by researching the sitter and the artist, looking for clues in letters, diaries, and other archival sources. By piecing together these fragments of the past, we can begin to understand the social and cultural world that this image inhabited.