Oude man of vrouw bij een verkoper van gebak 1772

Jean-Baptiste Leprince made this bistre wash drawing of an old man or woman buying baked goods from a vendor in 1772. Leprince was sent to Russia by Louis XV to work as a painter for Catherine the Great, and he remained there for five years. On his return, Leprince popularized the Russian genre, and this drawing exemplifies the orientalising fascination of the French court at the time. The social conditions in Russia at this time meant that peasants selling food on the roadside was not uncommon. The image shows the social realities of Russia in a way that could have been interpreted as both progressive and conservative; the image acknowledges the social realities of the Russian Empire, but also exoticizes it as something foreign and other. To understand this drawing better, one might research popular imagery of Russian peasants and how these were received in French court society. This drawing reminds us that the meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.