Bospad 1665 - 1679

Jan Foucsel created this print, "Bospad," using etching techniques. The winding forest path receding into the distance could be any road in the Netherlands, and the figures heading down it, a man on horseback followed by a walking boy and dog, could be anyone at all. Yet the proliferation of these kinds of landscape images in 17th-century Netherlands spoke to the rise of a new kind of art market, one driven by a growing middle class eager to celebrate their relationship to land that had only recently been wrestled from the sea and from foreign control. These images were made possible by a robust printmaking industry based in cities like Haarlem and Amsterdam, and they represent a conscious claiming of the local environment as a source of national pride. The images are full of visual codes relating to the landscape and contemporary culture. To fully understand the meaning of works such as these, historians study maps, travelogues, and other images of the period. The meaning of art is always contingent on the social and institutional context.