Oude vrouw, in profiel c. 1883 - 1914

Floris Arntzenius sketched this portrait of an old woman in profile using graphite on paper. The city of Amsterdam, where Arntzenius worked, was in the midst of enormous social changes at the turn of the 20th century. As industrialization brought wealth to some, it also produced widespread poverty. Arntzenius chose to focus his art on the everyday lives of ordinary people from all social classes. Here, his delicate sketching style captures the quiet dignity of old age, an approach that could be understood as aligned with the rise of social realism in the Netherlands. The directness of the image, and the artist’s apparent sympathy for the subject, seem progressive. To further understand this work, we could consider how it fits within the artist's broader body of work, and consult archives from that period to learn more about social conditions in Amsterdam.