Twee mannen met stokken in een landschap 1798 - 1837

Ernst Willem Jan Bagelaar made this etching of two men with sticks in a landscape, likely in the Netherlands, sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. The work invokes the Dutch landscape tradition, but also the period’s changing social values. Notice how the artist has used the etching technique to create delicate lines, capturing the details of the trees, the subtle undulations of the landscape and the figures. The men are almost dwarfed by the landscape, perhaps suggesting a romantic view of nature's power. But who are these men? Are they laborers? Or are they gentlemen taking a leisurely stroll? The sticks could be walking aids or perhaps tools for some kind of work. In this period, there was a growing interest in the lives of ordinary people, and art began to reflect this shift. Prints like this one were relatively affordable and widely disseminated, so it is interesting to speculate about who the audience for this image was and the new social values that it might have represented. To understand this artwork better, we can research the social and economic conditions of the Netherlands at this time. What was the role of landscape in Dutch identity? How were class divisions expressed in art? These are the kinds of questions that social art historians ask.