Dancing boy 

This is Ernst Welker's 'Dancing Boy', an undated pencil drawing held at the Städel Museum. Welker, who lived through the tumultuous period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was working in a Europe undergoing immense social and political change. The sketch offers us not a finished work, but a glimpse into the artistic process, and perhaps more broadly, into the cultural attitudes towards the body, youth, and performance during Welker's time. Representations of young male bodies in art have historically been loaded with complex social meanings, often reflecting ideals of beauty, innocence, or even eroticism. The deliberate incompleteness of the sketch form challenges any reading for an idealized or finished form. We are invited to consider the conditions under which the body is viewed, studied, and depicted. The drawing remains a reminder of the power dynamics inherent in representation, asking us to reflect on who is seen, how, and why.