Portret van een onbekende man met een hoed 1747 - 1773

Curator: Standing before us at the Rijksmuseum is Charles Phillips’ “Portrait of an Unknown Man with a Hat," a drawing rendered sometime between 1747 and 1773. It’s an enigmatic piece. Editor: Gosh, that hat *is* something, isn’t it? It kind of swallows him up! I wonder if he felt powerful, mysterious, or just plain silly under there. There's almost a melancholic air, a bit brooding even with all that charcoal swirling around his face. Curator: Right? The sheer size of the hat contrasts dramatically with what seems like this very formal setting implied by the costume, reflecting the sartorial norms and social hierarchies of the late Baroque era. It was likely quite a performance, getting dressed and ready to make a statement. Editor: You're totally right! The collar and buttoned coat is very stiff but the lighting is soft, so he isn’t stuck in this period he is in. You sense something beneath, a character. Curator: Indeed. Although the materials are humble – pen and charcoal on paper – Phillips evokes a real sense of presence. It asks us to consider this figure not just as a visual record, but as someone actively positioned within society. And also what society thought about him. Editor: The identity, of course, remains a question mark, which is what makes art great. Did this chap buy his way into the social stratosphere? Or was his hat an armour against a harsh society that threatened his freedom? There is even, in the slight blur, a democratic intention, that art may immortalise even the everyday figure. Curator: The choice of medium is crucial to note. Prints, drawings, and especially portraits in this period functioned as important markers of status and self-fashioning. This portrait, rendered in a relatively accessible medium like drawing, also opened up portraiture to a broader audience than paintings. Editor: Fascinating. It speaks volumes about image-making in an age teetering on the edge of democratisation and revolutions, right? Who gets remembered, how they are remembered. Curator: Absolutely. Looking at Phillips' work allows us to rethink the art world as part of a much bigger game involving visibility and status. Editor: So, next time we don a ridiculous hat, perhaps we should consider the story we’re trying to tell, because apparently, centuries from now, someone might be scratching their heads over our choices, too.