Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Fedorovna with children (detail) 1824

George Dawe painted this oil-on-canvas portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Fedorovna in the 19th century. The smooth surface reflects the artist’s keen eye and skilled hand, but also something more: the burgeoning of industrial manufacturing. Consider the pigments used to create her pale skin tones, her deep blue dress, and the red fabric draped behind her. These would have been processed in bulk, to a consistent recipe, and sold commercially. Dawe would have had to grind and mix them into paint himself, but the raw ingredients were increasingly commodified, reflecting the expanding global economy. The very scale of the canvas speaks to larger issues of labor and class, since producing a textile of this size would have required an entire workshop of weavers, dyers, and distributors. Looking at this portrait, we are not just seeing an individual likeness, but also a picture of production. This intersection of materials, making, and context shows us how we can understand an artwork’s full meaning, while challenging distinctions between fine art and craft.