Portret van twee vrouwen met een bolero en een wijde rok 1868 - 1869

Curator: Looking at this old photograph is like peering into another world. What's your initial reaction to it? Editor: It's hauntingly still. A little eerie, like a forgotten tableau. All that fabric swallowing the sitters. Curator: This image, dating from around 1868 to 1869, is entitled "Portret van twee vrouwen met een bolero en een wijde rok," translating to "Portrait of Two Women with a Bolero and a Wide Skirt." It comes to us from the collaborative minds of C. Janssens and E. Radermacher. Editor: The bolero and the skirt – those are some serious statement pieces. The almost identical poses… Do you think they're sisters, or perhaps performers? There is a hint of performativity in their dress and posture. Curator: That symmetry is fascinating. Their parallel stances and almost mirror-image clothing certainly suggests a deliberate mirroring of roles, or maybe the social expectations they had to fill. In genre painting, which is one of the major themes in this artwork, as well as portraiture and Realism as style, clothing ofthen speaks to aspirations, belonging, or rebellion against prevailing norms. Do their dresses, which could almost float away in a gentle breeze, give us some sense of what role their fashion may have served? Editor: Their dresses tell a story of constriction. Voluminous, yes, but also imprisoning, almost burying the individual beneath layers of social expectation. It’s a weird mix of visibility and erasure. Like, look at us, but don’t really see us. Curator: Exactly. The very act of sitting for this portrait seems to have demanded such calculated presentations. The visual language they express goes well beyond surface details. This captures so much of Victorian ideals and also some of their repression, or so much social and personal control, I almost would not be surprised to see they held their breath during the shot. Editor: It’s a fascinating dance between what they reveal and what they deliberately conceal. What remains unsaid is palpable. Curator: Agreed, it’s as if time stopped for these two figures, encapsulating an era with a thousand untold narratives. Editor: It gives me so much to consider about self-image, memory, and visual symbolism of the time. Thanks for illuminating that for me.