Kop van een vrouw met bril c. 1850 - 1950

Monogrammist DS sketched this head of a woman with glasses using graphite, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. It is useful to consider the rise of modern institutions that took place at this time. For example, the widespread availability of lenses correlates to the equally widespread increase in literacy. More books and newspapers were available than ever before in modern Europe. People were reading more, and a consequence of this was the mass manufacture of reading glasses. What does it mean to depict someone wearing glasses at this time? Is the artist making a comment on the rise of the printed word, or are the glasses simply a feature of the sitter's face? These are the questions that occupy the art historian. We use social and institutional history to understand the contexts in which art is made, and that act of understanding inevitably transforms the meaning of the artwork itself.