Boer met paard en ploeg 1899

Pieter Dupont's etching of a farmer with horse and plough captures a key theme in the social history of art. Looking at this print, we might first ask what it tells us about the Netherlands, the country in which it was made. Farming has always been at the heart of Dutch culture and its artistic history. This is a scene of hard labor, and Dupont's print subtly nods to the politics of imagery. While agricultural scenes had long been ennobled in Dutch painting, here there is little to romanticize the hard labor of working the land. Consider how the print's visual codes create meaning. The farmer is not idealized; the focus is on the intense manual labor. To understand this work better, we might explore the social and economic conditions of farmers in the Netherlands, using archives and historical studies. Understanding the conditions that shaped the artist’s vision allows us to grasp the meaning of art as something deeply contingent on its context.