Fish Market, Antwerp 1839

Thomas Shotter Boys made this watercolor, Fish Market, Antwerp, sometime during his career as a watercolorist and lithographer. The piece gives us a slice of 19th-century Belgium, a world of commerce and community, deeply rooted in its own history and traditions. Look at how Boys renders the scene. The monument looms large, a testament to enduring values, while the fish market bustles with activity, full of people engaged in the daily rituals of buying and selling. It’s a scene teeming with life, but also subtly structured by the social expectations of the time. The women, identifiable by their attire, play a central role in the commerce of the market. There’s a tension here, between the monumentality of the architecture and the transience of everyday life. It invites us to reflect on the ways in which public spaces like the fish market both shape and reflect the identities and experiences of the people who inhabit them.