Amor op de rug van een jonge vrouw 1851 - 1893

Ferdinand Leenhoff made this image of a nude woman carrying Cupid in an etching sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. This allegorical scene of love supported by femininity is typical of academic art from the Second Empire in France. Leenhoff himself was the brother of Suzanne Leenhoff, who married Edouard Manet. This puts him at the center of the Parisian avant-garde. However, unlike Manet, Leenhoff’s art reveals the persistence of conservative artistic tastes. It tells us much about the institutional structures of art at the time. The Beaux-Arts system sustained traditional techniques and subjects, even while artists such as Manet looked to modern life. To fully understand images like this, art historians research exhibition records, art criticism and the biographies of artists. This reminds us that meaning is never fixed, but changes with social and institutional context.