Boer met eieren in een mand 1628 - 1648

Jan Matham made this engraving, *Boer met eieren in een mand*, sometime in the first half of the 17th century. The image depicts a peasant man carrying a basket of eggs, likely on his way to market. Matham was a printmaker working in Haarlem, a city that saw an influx of artists in the early 1600s, many of whom fled the Spanish occupation of Antwerp. Haarlem became an important center for the development of a distinctively Dutch visual culture, one in which the rural landscape and the lives of ordinary people became a central focus. Matham and his contemporaries were part of a commercial print market that catered to a middle-class audience eager for images of local life. The poem inscribed at the bottom translates as "When I have sold out and Trijn starts to cry, I take such pills, then I can get her satisfied again." The poem refers to Trijn as the man's wife or sweetheart. This detail can tell us about the artist's idea of this man's life, as well as that of his audience. To understand this image fully, we might research the economy of Haarlem at this time and how the local market for prints operated.