Draperie, mogelijk van een baldakijn 1845 - 1891

Johannes Bosboom sketched this drapery, possibly for a baldachin, with a pencil on paper sometime between 1830 and 1891. Bosboom was a Dutch artist, celebrated in his day for his paintings of church interiors. What can a quick sketch like this tell us about the man and the society in which he worked? The very act of sketching, of quickly capturing visual information, was becoming a more common practice in 19th-century Europe as art academies encouraged it. More than that, though, the sketch embodies something of the Netherlands' shifting relationship to religion. Bosboom was raised in a liberal Protestant household, and the sketch shows a detached, almost clinical interest in the trappings of religious ritual, rather than religious zeal. By looking at Bosboom's personal history, and at wider trends in Dutch society, we can understand the sketch as more than just a study of drapery. It's a document of a changing society.