Portret van de vrouw van Jacobus Johannes Batelier 1778

Aert Schouman made this portrait of Jacobus Johannes Batelier's wife using pen in brown, brush in gray, and graphite. This is not the high art of oil on canvas, but a more workaday approach to image making. Executed with careful strokes, Schouman's drawing demonstrates the skilled labor involved in creating such a likeness. The use of brown ink and gray wash brings a muted, understated quality to the portrait, emphasizing the sitter's somber attire and modest demeanor. Yet Schouman has taken care to model the forms of her face and clothing, building up tone with dense hatching. The materiality of the drawing—the paper support, the various media applied to its surface—speaks to the intimate, personal nature of portraiture in the 18th century. It also reflects the growing merchant class in Dutch society, where the relatively accessible medium of drawing made portraiture available to a wider audience, and marks the shifting aesthetics in art history.