Eetkamer in herenhuis De Oorsprong in Utrecht 1889

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht made this photograph of the dining room in the manor house De Oorsprong in Utrecht. It's undated, but the image is part of a larger series of photographs of the house that are thought to have been made between 1880 and 1910. The interior gives us a glimpse into the domestic life of the upper class in the Netherlands at the end of the 19th century. The room is filled with an eclectic mix of objects: framed photographs, small statues, and even dolls. The dark, heavy furniture and the ornate rug suggest a desire for comfort and luxury, but also perhaps a certain stuffiness. What can we make of the institutional history of this artwork? As a photograph commissioned to document a manor house, the work could be seen as a tool for preserving a certain image of the Dutch upper class. By studying photographs like these, and combining that with other sources such as letters and diaries, we can begin to understand the social and cultural values of the time.