Den dappren krijgers, die gij hier in prent aanschouwt, / Werd vrijheids edle zaak vereerend toevertrouwd [(...)] 1822 - 1849

This print of soldiers was made by Jan de Lange II, a bookseller and printer operating in the Netherlands in the first half of the 19th century. The image is a wood engraving, with hand-applied color. Wood engraving is a relief printing technique, in which the artist carves an image into the end-grain of a block of wood. The areas that are cut away do not receive ink, while the raised areas do. The block is then inked and pressed onto paper. The resulting print has a distinctive graphic quality, with crisp lines and a slightly textured surface. Because it was relatively inexpensive, it was ideally suited to the production of printed ephemera: precisely the kind of imagery that would have been sold by someone like de Lange. It’s important to recognize that even seemingly minor works like this one depend on both artistic skill and significant networks of distribution. It is through such artifacts that social and political identities are produced and circulated.