Victualie meester der 1ste Klasse 1835 - 1850

Editor: This is Albertus Verhoesen's "Victualie meester der 1ste Klasse," likely from between 1835 and 1850, a watercolour housed here at the Rijksmuseum. It feels...regal, in a slightly stiff way? What do you see in this work? Curator: Stiff is a great word for it! It's like encountering a character from a play. I see a very carefully constructed performance of status, frozen in watercolour. You know, the Romantic era wasn’t just about swooning landscapes; it also had a fascination with the individual and their place in society, especially when packaged within nascent national identities. This character embodies that – every button, every angle of his hat, is meant to communicate authority and respectability, yet he also feels isolated, doesn’t he? Almost like he's playing a role in an empty theatre. Do you feel the romantic undercurrent? Editor: I do see it now, with the emphasis on the individual – but it is different than I expected of the time period, especially juxtaposed with a feeling of isolation like that. Almost haunting. How do genre-paintings play a role, specifically? Curator: Precisely! It isn’t a formal portrait of nobility, but instead it attempts to capture the “everyday man,” a concept blossoming then in the cultural mindset. What is everyday or "normal" now for one person may not be in someone else's time or place. The "everyday man" idea would also be repackaged time and time again across generations and sociopolitical spectrums in order to garner emotional appeal in favor of war and conflict. Editor: So it's not just about capturing a likeness, but also about placing this "everyday man" within a social framework. Thank you - it's incredible to understand how an image of such a character says so much about that time period! Curator: Absolutely. It is just like an illustrated record of changing social values, revealing that even something as simple as a watercolour can have surprising depth and a dark sense of humour about it!