Gezicht op een stad aan het water before 1900

This small print, by Jules Liorel, shows a view of a city on the water. Without a date, we can only speculate on the moment in which it was made, though the industrial character of the city is a clue. In nineteenth-century Europe, the expansion of urban centres went hand in hand with the growth of infrastructure to facilitate trade. As the city became a hub of economic exchange, new networks were developed to aid the circulation of goods. What you see represented here is likely the physical manifestation of the logic of modernization. This image is also a product of the nineteenth-century print industry. Analyzing prints like this one can tell us a lot about the relationship between art and mass media. If we look closely, consulting historical sources and archives, we may discover more about this place and its time.