Officier te paard in gesprek met een soldaat 1819 - 1881

Johannes Tavenraat made this drawing of an officer on horseback speaking with a soldier in the Netherlands sometime in the mid-19th century. The image presents a hierarchy common to military and civil life, yet its informal qualities also point to a more intimate relationship between the classes. The Netherlands in the 19th century was a constitutional monarchy with a complex relationship to its military. On the one hand, the Dutch prided themselves on their military achievements during the Golden Age, but on the other, they were wary of the cost of maintaining a large standing army. This drawing can be read as an attempt to reconcile these two conflicting impulses. The officer on horseback is clearly in command, but he is also shown as being engaged in conversation with a common soldier. This suggests a more egalitarian relationship between officers and enlisted men than might have been the case in other European armies of the time. Historians of art and the military rely on a variety of sources to interpret images such as this, including military archives, period newspapers and magazines, and personal letters and diaries. These sources can help us understand the social and political context in which this drawing was made, and what it might have meant to the artist and his audience.