Man met paraplu met advertenties te Londen 1858

Gerrit Postma created this pencil drawing, Man with Umbrella with Advertisements in London, in the 19th century. The composition centres around two figures whose stark presence is heightened by the expansiveness of the off-white paper. On the left, a man with an open umbrella disrupts traditional notions of personal space, his form obscured by the very object meant to protect him. The umbrella displays an advertisement, turning him into a walking billboard, a signifier of the burgeoning commercial culture of London. To the right, a figure stands passively, cane in hand, an observer or perhaps a contrast to the man-as-advertisement. The contrast extends to the very structure of the drawing itself. The active figure on the left, rendered with dense, almost frantic lines, contrasts against the relative calm of the figure on the right. Postma uses these formal choices to comment on the commodification of public life. The drawing functions as a cultural critique, a statement on how advertising infiltrates and alters the individual's relationship to the urban environment, turning people into mobile signs within the cityscape.