Man die een zak draagt Possibly 1651

Harmen ter Borch rendered this drawing of a man carrying a sack sometime around 1652. Ter Borch lived during the Dutch Golden Age, a time of great economic prosperity and artistic innovation in the Netherlands. In this spare sketch, the man's posture speaks to the labor he is performing, a life of labor and toil, etched with lines indicating burden and weariness. The sack itself obscures the man’s face, depersonalizing him. During the Dutch Golden Age, the Netherlands was deeply involved in global trade, including the trade of enslaved people. While this drawing does not explicitly depict slavery, it evokes the backbreaking labor that was so integral to the Dutch economy at that time. We see not a portrait of an individual, but a representation of labor, and perhaps, an echo of the human cost of economic success.