Portret van Thomas Paine 1811 - 1875

Curator: Well, that's a striking piece. Something about it feels almost ghostly, you know? Editor: Indeed. We are looking at a print of a portrait of Thomas Paine. While the piece is attributed to Albert Schule, its precise dating remains somewhere between 1811 and 1875. Look closely; you’ll note it’s an engraving. Curator: The cross-hatching creates this incredible texture, almost like you could reach out and feel the fabric of his coat. It is also, maybe because it's a copy, a bit… flat. What I like about the flatness is the even illumination across his face – no drama. Editor: Notice how the image is presented: the octagonal border crops him, but only gently. That very act declares it a constructed artifact – made with care and labor, designed for dissemination. The materiality is very present. Curator: I'm struck by his gaze; direct but not confrontational. I wonder what he was thinking just as the artist captured this moment. Or perhaps, as it's an engraving after a painting, captured something else – time maybe? I bet the making of a copy introduced a distance, something to feel almost viscerally. Editor: And considering Paine's radical ideas about society and government, the labor involved in reproducing this portrait, in making it available to a wider public, reinforces those notions of democratic access to information and representation. The work is made with tools and technology that enabled replication, scaling of visual data. It embodies a kind of visual activism. Curator: Perhaps it flattens Paine precisely to distribute the ideas, and that, counterintuitively, humanizes the revolutionary. But that yellowish paper is not so nice! Does it degrade a good thing, I wonder. I like what remains more than what might have been. Editor: Think about what it means to own or distribute this kind of print during a period of intense social and political change. How did people consume imagery like this and use this object? We’ll never know! Curator: Ultimately, it gives one pause. Makes me feel how portraits like these have this amazing and terrifying staying power. Editor: Absolutely. These visual objects provide insight to systems of production and distribution. In its capacity, an object can influence thought by existing as its accessible manifestation. Thank you.