Twee figuren met een hooibaal in een roeiboot c. 1780 - 1800

Barend Hendrik Thier created this gray ink drawing, titled "Two figures with a haystack in a rowboat" sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The page shows three sketches, with the upper two depicting human figures using waterways to transport hay. In the Dutch Republic at this time, inland waterways served as vital transportation arteries for both people and goods. The figures in Thier's sketches are most likely farmers or rural laborers, for whom water transport was a routine element of their lives and livelihoods. Pictures like these would have been popular among city dwellers, expressing a nostalgic view of the countryside and those who lived and worked there. By turning to historical sources like tax records, shipping manifests, and estate inventories, we can learn more about the changing social status and economic conditions of the people represented here. Further research would enrich our understanding of Thier's subjects and the world they inhabited.