Portret van de verzamelaar H. de Kat van Hardinxveld 1847 - 1865

Franciscus Bernardus Waanders made this print of H. de Kat van Hardinxveld, a collector, in the Netherlands in the 19th century. Prints like this one helped create a public image for collectors in the 1800s. The trappings of wealth and taste are all here. The man is well dressed and posed in front of paintings hung salon-style. He holds a print in his hands, showing us his connoisseurship. But what's most interesting is the institutional context for images like this. Museums were starting to open to the public, creating a need to educate people's taste. Art collectors played a key role here, lending their collections to museums and shaping the public's understanding of what art was important. This print thus acts as a kind of advertisement for the collector's expertise, which he could then leverage to gain social and cultural capital. By researching the history of museums and collecting, as well as the artist's biography, we can better understand the social forces that shaped this image.