Een vrouw zit op een stoel 1633 - 1672

Willem Basse etched this image of a woman seated on a chair sometime in the mid-seventeenth century. What do we make of it? In the Dutch Golden Age, the poor were often represented in art to convey moral messages. Artists sometimes poked fun at the lower classes, focusing on stereotypes of drunkenness or laziness. Basse’s etching isn’t judgmental like that. The woman looks comfortable, even confident. She meets our gaze directly. A bucket rests at her feet, but we don’t know whether she’s been working or is about to start. To understand the artwork more fully, we need to understand the visual language it uses. Old parish records or census data could help us understand the lives of ordinary people in the Netherlands at the time. These resources might offer insights into how social class was lived and represented in the artwork of the period.