Staande vrouw met een mand c. 1868s - 1878s

Curator: Here we have a work by Jan Willem van Borselen, "Standing Woman with a Basket," dating from roughly 1868 to 1878. It’s a pencil drawing, currently residing here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My first impression is… understated. There's a tentative quality to the line work, almost as if the artist were whispering the woman onto the page. A very quiet humanness about it. Curator: It's interesting you pick up on that tentativeness. Van Borselen likely produced this as a preliminary sketch. The visible sketchbook page indicates its function within his broader artistic practice – a workspace for generating ideas. We get to see the artist thinking. Editor: Absolutely! You can almost feel him circling around the form, searching for the right gesture. It feels more intimate than a finished painting. I imagine him sketching this while sitting in some market scene and just rapidly trying to capture something interesting he sees there. It could be nothing more than this is one frame in an idea generation sketch for something bigger. Curator: Precisely! Now, consider the woman herself. Her clothing, the basket…these are all signifiers of her class and role within society. The drawing speaks to the daily labor and lived experiences of ordinary people during that period. Editor: Her pose, the way she's holding the basket—there's a quiet dignity, I think. She’s carrying the weight of her world in that basket. Do we know the context in which this drawing was created, curator? I see here that this is likely to be done during the timeframe that The Netherlands was in a massive transition. Did that change the way this was represented in media, as well? Curator: During this time, there was certainly more depiction in everyday activities as that became more normalized. As artists began trying to represent this commoner type of lifestyle. This is something Van Borselen captured really well here, though simply as a quick and casual pencil sketch. Editor: Thank you for taking the time to explore this work! Now I have a bit more insight and understanding of the material! It truly does bring to light how quick snapshots and sketches in time may offer so much more information that many other mediums. Curator: Yes, truly an illuminating process! A little more light, shadow, and reflection into our lives.