Twee mannen met zwaarden en een vrouw met een sluier 1836 - 1912

Isaac Weissenbruch made this print of two men with swords and a woman with a veil sometime in the nineteenth century. The artist has not provided us with many clues to the narrative, so it is up to the viewer to imagine what might be happening here. In the nineteenth century, art was increasingly exhibited in public museums and commercial galleries. Artists had to capture the attention of a diverse public and compete in a crowded marketplace. One strategy was to create images with ambiguous or open-ended narratives that encouraged viewers to spend more time considering their possible meanings. The artist might have expected that viewers would use other cultural resources, such as popular novels or theatrical productions, to make sense of the image. As historians, we can investigate these cultural contexts by looking at sources like exhibition reviews, advertisements, and audience surveys. These sources can help us to understand how images functioned in the social and institutional environment of their time.