Boerenfamilie aan de maaltijd 1770 - 1825

Simon Andreas Krausz created this drawing of a peasant family at mealtime with graphite. Looking at the image, we get the sense that Krausz wanted to offer a glimpse into the daily lives of ordinary people, possibly in the Netherlands, given that the artist was Dutch. The scene depicts a mother pouring something into a bowl while another figure, perhaps the father, holds a child. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was a growing interest in portraying the lives of common people in art, fueled in part by Enlightenment ideals and a desire to depict everyday life with greater realism. Krausz's image seems to tap into this interest. As historians, we can look at the changing social and economic conditions of the time, using census records, estate inventories, and other archival sources to get a better sense of what life was like for the people Krausz depicted. We can understand the image as something contingent on social and institutional context.