Vrouw en ram in ommuurde tuin 1907

Willem van Konijnenburg created this drawing of a woman and a ram in a walled garden, but the date remains unknown. At first glance, this looks like a mythical scene, with a classical nude in an enclosed garden, but on closer inspection the subject is less clear. It's difficult to say exactly when the artwork was made, but Konijnenburg lived through both World Wars. He belonged to a generation of artists who saw the old certainties of European culture collapse into violence and barbarism. His choice of symbolism here, in the enclosed garden, could be his response to the social anxieties of the time. We might ask, is the garden a sanctuary, or a prison? Is the woman a goddess or a captive? The fact that the drawing is so ambiguous, may indicate that the artist was struggling to make sense of the world around him. To understand Konijnenburg's work fully, we need to look at the context in which he was working, and the impact that major historical events had on his artistic output.