Runmolen aan de Omval after 1688

Curator: Jan van der Vinne's etching, "Runmolen aan de Omval," created sometime after 1688, depicts a tranquil river scene in the Dutch countryside. It’s mostly grays and blacks, tiny delicate lines—honestly, a bit melancholic. Editor: I agree about the tone. And those windmills on the periphery of the water evoke the socio-economic conditions that drove the Dutch Golden Age and its deep ties to the development of advanced engineering to claim more territory and control water resources. Curator: Ah, there you go, taking all the poetry out of it! I’m mostly drawn to the clouds; the etching technique somehow makes them feel so heavy, like they're pressing down on the little figures in their boats. What kind of back-breaking labour did they perform? The composition just reinforces the scale of human effort. Editor: Well, precisely! These canals weren't just picturesque waterways. The lives of those anonymous laborers who dug them are intricately linked with this landscape. We need to ask: whose stories get told, and whose get erased? Curator: But even so, there's something beautiful about it all, even with its inherent complexities and power dynamics. It has this almost ethereal glow from the sun somewhere… Editor: The ‘glow’ perhaps alludes to the illusion of an ever prosperous and powerful future fueled by the globalized industry that required exploited human labor. Curator: That may be! Anyway, I see van der Vinne offering us a glimpse of the Netherlands at a turning point, maybe starting to question its role and resources within a larger, exploitative world economy. Editor: Definitely. And by examining those tensions, maybe we can reflect on our own relationship to labour and power today, both locally and globally.