Children collecting leftover crops 1883

Hans Andersen Brendekilde painted these children collecting leftover crops in Denmark at a time of significant social change. Here, we see rural life depicted in a naturalistic style; but is this an objective view? Or a political statement? As a historian, I ask, what is the public role of art? The bare feet of the boy on the left, the heavy bundle of crops the girl carries, the small figures of the children themselves - what do these details tell us about social class in the Danish countryside? What do they tell us about child labour? In whose interests was it to portray such scenes? To understand Brendekilde's work better we can look into the economic structures of the time, including records of land ownership, ethnographic studies of peasant life, and exhibition histories. By putting the painting in its social and institutional context, we start to see art's meaning as something contingent.