Portret van Johann Friedrich Tiede 1774 - 1819

Editor: This is "Portret van Johann Friedrich Tiede" from around 1774 to 1819 by Gottlob August Liebe, currently held at the Rijksmuseum. It seems to be a watercolor, and there is a softness to the color palette. What catches your attention about this piece? Curator: I'm drawn to how the image itself speaks to the labour of its creation, literally being ‘handprinted.’ Notice the material quality of the paper - aged, almost fragile - which adds another layer to our understanding of its production and survival. Editor: Interesting! The physical creation is central, then. Is that aging a key aspect? Curator: Precisely! And it is vital to understand that such a work would be commissioned – so let's think about patronage at the time and how it fueled a small but robust industry of printmaking, providing income for artists like Liebe, and access for those outside the traditional painting market. How accessible would an image like this be? Editor: So this makes art more available to society? Were portraits such as these considered "high art"? Curator: Not necessarily high art, challenging the art world, yes! This is because it's accessible. We must acknowledge that prints like this played a vital role in shaping social identities, by illustrating printed material to an increasingly literate public and the professional and amateur craftsmen who transferred images onto wood and copper. Editor: Fascinating! I never considered the social implications of printmaking. I suppose I’d usually focused on paintings only. Curator: Focusing on the print itself forces us to ask some very useful questions about its place in society then, and its survival until now. The materiality informs how we consume the piece. Editor: So the work's creation impacts my reading as the viewer too. Thank you! Curator: Exactly, by thinking this way, we’ve moved beyond a mere portrait, considering how the consumption of this artwork provides real social context.