Watermolen en een schuur c. 1780 - 1800

Editor: This is "Watermolen en een schuur," a drawing by Barend Hendrik Thier, dating back to around 1780 to 1800. It looks like it was created with pencil and ink on paper. The sketchiness gives it a very immediate, almost intimate feel. What do you see in this piece, focusing on the labor it shows? Curator: What immediately strikes me is the focus on the built environment and its function within society. Notice the watermill, a crucial piece of technology for the late 18th century, powering industry through the manipulation of natural resources. Then consider the materials themselves: the wood, the thatch, the paper, ink, and pencil, all derived from different modes of extraction and production. Editor: So, you're focusing on how the materials and the scenes depicted are connected to work? Curator: Precisely. Consider how the drawing was made. It is a seemingly simple work, but it involved labor: the gathering of materials, the act of drawing itself, likely as a means of documenting or understanding the world around the artist. The sketch is almost ethnographic in that sense, but the material means is the actual point here. It makes us think: who built that mill? Who thatched the roof? And what was Thier’s relationship to those workers, and the products of their work? How are their livelihoods linked? The medium isn’t the message – the *means* is the message. Editor: I hadn't considered how the choice of such ordinary materials adds another layer to that reading. So, even something as seemingly straightforward as a landscape drawing can reveal a whole network of social and material relations. Curator: Absolutely. By considering the labor embedded within both the subject and the creation of this artwork, we gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between art and society, manufacturer and consumer, not only back then but today as well. Editor: It's fascinating to think about the amount of untold history captured within a simple sketch! Curator: Indeed!