Young Couple 1883

Ferdinand Fagerlin painted this image of a Young Couple some time in the mid-19th century. We're in Northern Europe, in a domestic interior, where a woman is sitting and sewing while a man stands eating at the table. Fagerlin was a Finnish painter who specialized in genre scenes, pictures of everyday life. This picture is typical of the kind of scene he liked to paint, and it tells us something about how people thought about the different roles of men and women in the 1800s. The man’s presence in the house contrasts with the woman, who is confined to the domestic space. We can look at the fashions and the interior design here to get a sense of what this time was like. Art historians often use archival sources and historical research to understand the context in which the image was produced. By learning about the society and culture of the time, we can better understand the meaning and significance of the artwork. The meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.