Lopende man 1810

Andries Cornelis Krijgeer made this small etching, ‘Lopende Man,’ or ‘Running Man,’ in 1810, using etching on paper. In this image, Krijgeer presents us with a seemingly simple, unremarkable scene. A lone figure walks away from us down a lane, away from a cottage and towards a windmill. But within this image, visual codes create meaning through cultural references and historical associations. Krijgeer was working in the Netherlands, a nation built on trade, where windmills powered economic life. We might read the cottage as a symbol of the traditional, rural, and deeply Protestant culture of the Netherlands. Perhaps the man is walking away from that world, toward modernity. As historians, we can look into the economic conditions of the Netherlands at this time, its relationship to the sea, the political status of ordinary people, and the religious landscape. Through these resources, we can deepen our understanding of the artwork as something contingent on social and institutional context.