Boer met paard 1609 - 1642

Pieter van Laer made this etching of a farmer with a horse sometime in the early 17th century. Van Laer was Dutch, but he lived for many years in Rome, where he became known for paintings and prints of everyday life. This image reflects the artist's interest in the lives of ordinary people. The farmer, the horse, and the dog look tired and worn out. The bare tree in the background adds to the sense of hardship and struggle. This is not the heroic vision of rural life that you often see in art, but a more realistic portrayal of the difficulties of making a living from the land. The etching technique itself is also interesting, because it allowed artists to create multiple copies of an image, making art more accessible to a wider audience. To understand this work better, we can look at the social and economic conditions of the time, as well as the history of printmaking.