Boerin met een hark 1881 - 1927

Curator: Up next is "Boerin met een hark" or "Farmer with a Rake", a pencil drawing on toned paper by Johan Antonie de Jonge, thought to be created sometime between 1881 and 1927. Editor: Mmm, stark. It's a landscape with a kind of ghostly quality. You can almost feel the rural silence just looking at it. It looks very drafty; like a forgotten thing hastily drawn on some scrap of paper. Curator: Well, De Jonge’s approach reflects the academic realism valued at the time. We often see these pencil sketches as preliminary studies that capture essential forms and compositions of rural life. Think of it as a quick observation turned artistic endeavor. Editor: Observational, yes, but the soul of this is in that rawness! It’s all about capturing a moment, fleeting light, the turn of the head…you sense the artist's presence as though they were right there beside the field themselves. This also gives it a quality like Millet's art and links back to older Dutch landscape painting and the rise of the common worker in visual imagery. Curator: Indeed, there is a move here to recognize agricultural laborers; De Jonge presents an honest view, possibly challenging urban elitism of his time. This era saw increased migration to cities and the need to address rural decline and the contributions of countryside people to a nation's cultural and economic fabric. Editor: But don’t you find a certain vulnerability? The woman is kind of faceless, not idealized. It makes you consider the hardships maybe. Like they are trying to be solid when society just brushes them aside. That’s really thought-provoking! Curator: Yes! That feeling mirrors the larger cultural discourse about who got to be seen, and who mattered in an industrialized world. How should farmers be visible or have power, right? What value does agricultural work hold in the changing tides of nationhood and progress? Editor: To look at this seemingly humble pencil sketch and see that…that’s quite an invitation to remember the silent contributors around us, and not just then. It’s an always thing. Curator: Exactly! This drawing reminds us that sometimes, the simplest forms carry the deepest cultural resonance. Let's carry this vision to our modern landscape too.