Waterval te Ruhla 1864

Louis Charles Hora Siccama made this etching, "Waterval te Ruhla," in 1864. Here we see the image of a seemingly bucolic scene with a small boy, a waterfall and house in the Thuringian Forest in Germany. But this is also a very constructed image. Consider that Siccama was Dutch and the print was made during a time of burgeoning tourism. Picturesque views like this became popular souvenirs of middle-class travels. The institutionalization of art through galleries and museums shaped the market for these kinds of images and made them available to a wide public. To understand the significance of this seemingly simple print, research into tourism during the 19th century and the popularization of landscape imagery would be very valuable. Art, after all, is always contingent on the social and institutional contexts in which it is made and received.