Bepakte man met een stok en een meisje voor de deur van een woning 1858

Jan Gerard Smits created this drawing of a ‘Packed man with a stick and a girl in front of the door of a house’ at an unknown date. Smits was working during a period of great social change, which led to increased mobility of the population. The artwork captures a transient moment, charged with potential narratives. A man heavily laden and a girl standing at a doorway, their intersection raises questions about gendered experiences of domestic space versus the outside world, and about the social classes. The girl appears to be marking the door frame. Is she tracing the height of a sibling who has left home? Smits uses careful strokes to highlight the emotional tension between departure and longing, independence and dependence, inviting us to reflect on our own attachments to home and place in a changing world.