Portretbuste van een oude man met baard 1798 - 1837

Ernst Willem Jan Bagelaar created this diminutive portrait bust of a bearded old man using etching techniques. This kind of study of an elderly man could have multiple purposes, including the exploration of character or the depiction of a biblical figure. In the Netherlands, the etching became highly developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Printmaking allowed artists to create multiple impressions of the same image to be sold on the art market. While Dutch society in this period was structured in a hierarchical way, with different social classes and power structures, it was also a time of burgeoning capitalist activity that allowed a wider range of people access to art ownership. This artwork, while small in scale, speaks to large shifts in Dutch culture. The tools of the social historian, including archival research and the study of economic data, enable us to understand the artwork as the product of a specific time and place.