Hoorn met bladeren en een koe 1877 - 1880

Jac van Looij made this sketch of a horn, leaves and a cow, on paper, sometime in his lifetime, but we don't know when. Van Looij was a painter, etcher and lithographer, but he was also a writer. His sensitivity to the visual world was mirrored by his keen observation of the social world. He saw, and he helped others to see. It’s fascinating to see what someone chooses to record in a sketchbook. These quick, informal sketches suggest the artist’s eye was always at work, open to the poetic potential of everyday life, where a cow and a horn are combined to form some kind of symbolic heraldry. Van Looij's images are not overtly political, but they often touch on class and poverty. Art historians can analyze the visual language of a sketch like this, and they can also dig deeper to understand what it meant for a Dutch artist of this period to focus on such subjects. Only through close attention to both the image and its context can we understand its full significance.