Badkoets met kroon, vermoedelijk op het strand van Scheveningen 1864 - 1887

Curator: Well, my initial reaction is... curiosity tinged with melancholy. It’s like a faded photograph pulled from a forgotten family album, hinting at stories just out of reach. What about you? Editor: We’re looking at a late 19th-century albumen print entitled “Badkoets met kroon, vermoedelijk op het strand van Scheveningen,” or, “Bathing Cart with Crown, probably on the beach of Scheveningen,” attributed to Carl Philip Wollrabe. It's an image of a horse-drawn bathing machine on a beach. Curator: A bathing machine, complete with a crown! That immediately sparks images of secluded modesty and veiled secrets... or perhaps even a bit of theatrical pomp. The crown feels so deliciously out of place. Like a fairytale gone slightly awry. What does it mean? Editor: Well, bathing machines themselves were a symbol of the burgeoning seaside resorts of the time, designed to offer privacy for bathers as they entered the water, to protect modesty... Curator: So the crown could be... a status symbol? An announcement that even seaside privacy had its own social hierarchy? Editor: Precisely. Or a visual marker catering to an aristocratic clientele in this emerging leisure landscape. These photographs served to document the culture of the seaside, popularised it, too. Curator: It also suggests the changing attitudes of the era – a certain performance of propriety masking an underlying fascination with the body and the sea. The composition feels so meticulously staged... everyone carefully posed. The beach seems almost empty. Editor: Yes, it echoes the Romantic ideal – that meeting place between sublime Nature, and mankind attempting to exert their will in relation to that wild domain. Also, the albumen process gives it that beautiful sepia tone. This specific tonality creates a world which has, now, faded somewhat… into memory itself. Curator: It is evocative, isn't it? That feeling of a lost moment recaptured. Makes me wonder about the people in the picture and what they made of the sea and of its symbolic and social roles at that time. Editor: Ultimately it becomes a poignant snapshot of shifting social tides, both literally and figuratively. I am always moved by these very particular, but somehow also utterly familiar scenes.