Montering van de Amsterdamse artillerie, ca. 1787 1787 - 1790

This is a watercolor from around 1787, showing the uniform of an Amsterdam artilleryman. The anonymous artist, like many of the period, was captivated by the details of military dress. The materiality of this kind of image can be easily overlooked. Yet, everything we see here stems from extractive industries, global trade, and manufacturing processes. The pigments, made of ground minerals, gave color to the drawing. The paper was handmade, using laborious techniques. His wool uniform dyed in blues and blacks, and adorned with bright brass buttons. In fact, his clothing is itself a kind of industrial product, made possible by the labor of many hands. Uniforms were an essential part of statecraft. To see the finished product here, neatly rendered on paper, is to grasp the way that even seemingly traditional forms of image-making were deeply intertwined with modern systems of production and consumption. So the next time you see a drawing, don't just look at the image – think about the making.