Paard 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this drawing of a horse with a graphite pencil on paper. Though this sketch is not dated, it seems safe to say it was likely made in the first half of the twentieth century in the Netherlands. We can consider how the horse appears in Dutch painting going back to the old masters. It also appears often in the Hague School, in landscapes populated with livestock. But we might also ask ourselves about the role of the horse in Dutch society at the time, and the social status of the people who owned horses. Was Vreedenburgh aiming to serve that market for images, or perhaps working against it? The task of the social art historian is to trace the patterns of production and consumption, to ask, "who made this, who was it for, and what did it mean to them?" And by answering those questions, we get closer to understanding what art is for, and what it means to us today.