Fotoreproductie van La Chasse au Rat door Jean Baptiste Madou before 1878

Curator: Here we have a photomechanical print titled "Fotoreproductie van La Chasse au Rat door Jean Baptiste Madou," or, in English, "Photographic Reproduction of The Rat Hunt by Jean Baptiste Madou." It's dated to before 1878 and resides here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My first thought? A bizarre mix of drama and slapstick. All that shadow and the way those figures are arranged, it almost feels staged, theatrical. A very specific moment frozen. Is that the poor rat they're all so focused on? Curator: It is indeed, and what you’re responding to is its roots in genre painting, a tradition of depicting everyday life. This print reproduces an earlier artwork and aligns with the rise of photography's role in documenting and disseminating art to a broader audience. This allowed works to circulate far beyond the walls of galleries. Editor: It has an echo of theatre somehow, and perhaps there's a parallel here with staged photography, using this mechanical medium to almost ‘fake’ reality. So the theatrics of the set piece become democratized. It's there for anyone with a penny for a print. The humor seems quite pointed though; look at their weapons! The absurdity of all those people banding together…it makes one consider, what *are* we hunting, individually, and together as a society? Curator: Absolutely, and the style hints toward realism, which sought to capture scenes as they were, devoid of excessive romanticism. Yet the subject, a group of men hunting a rat, carries this air of caricature, nodding towards academic art traditions, which were often rooted in didactic messaging or at least an implied sense of societal decorum even as they offered some levity. Editor: And I get this whisper of something darker here. Like a memento mori for a collective effort – you amass your friends to fight something tiny and, boom, all of the group purpose and energy fades with it. Curator: That touches upon how Romanticism infused genre scenes like this. Though seemingly mundane, themes of mortality, community, and even societal anxieties found their way in, creating a fascinating tension. Editor: Ultimately, this ‘reproduction’ sparks thoughts on everything, from high and low art, photography's democratization of both and then those strange undercurrents lurking beneath a hunting party that just doesn't know when to stop. Curator: Indeed. It serves as a quiet reminder that even what we dismiss as minor or insignificant, the metaphorical “rat” we chase, can reveal something meaningful about ourselves and the societies we build.