Head of a boy, Venice 1880

Eugene de Blaas painted this oil on canvas titled "Head of a Boy, Venice," sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Born near Venice, de Blaas is best known for his paintings of Venetian genre scenes. This head study hints at the broader social and cultural context of his work. Venice, by this time, had become a tourist destination, a stop on the Grand Tour. De Blaas's paintings, often featuring idealized and romanticized scenes of everyday Venetian life, catered to the tastes of tourists and the art market. The rosy-cheeked boy in this painting is anonymous and likely from the working class. De Blaas's genre paintings create meaning through a romanticizing lens. Was he portraying an accurate picture of Venetian life or pandering to outsiders’ expectations? To understand the painting better, one might research the history of tourism in Venice and the market for Venetian genre paintings, reflecting on the meaning of art as contingent on social and institutional context.