Portret van een onbekende oude vrouw 1892

Frans Proost made this print, "Portrait of an Unknown Old Woman," sometime in the early twentieth century. It presents an interesting puzzle of social and institutional history. The work embodies an apparent contradiction: we see a highly skilled artist, trained in the academies of Europe, deploying his expertise to represent a subject from the margins of society. The image participates in a cultural trope, the aging peasant, but does so in a manner that elevates the sitter through the artist's skill. Proost's image seems to both respect and ennoble the subject, a woman who might have been overlooked by history. To understand the image better, we could turn to the archives of art institutions, exhibition records, and publications that circulated in Belgium during Proost's lifetime. In doing so, we could learn more about how Proost situated himself in the artistic and social world of his time.