Zittende man, op de rug gezien 1865 - 1913

Bramine Hubrecht made this drawing, titled ‘Sitting Man, Seen From the Back’, with a graphite pencil on paper. In nineteenth-century Europe, life drawing was a cornerstone of academic artistic training. The Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where Hubrecht studied, put this kind of exercise at the center of its curriculum. But consider the social role of this kind of image: who gets to look at whom, and under what conditions? A figure like this one, seen from the back, may prompt questions about the power dynamics between artist and model, viewer and subject. Is the figure’s anonymity a form of vulnerability? Or might it be read as a form of resistance, a refusal to be fully seen or known? These are questions that art historians continue to explore, using archival sources, social histories, and feminist theory to understand the complex meanings embedded in artworks like this one.