Ontwerp voor illustratie voor In Holland staat een huis: silhouet van de familie die de hond het huis uitjaagt 1884 - 1917

Nelly Bodenheim created this silhouette design in the early 20th century to illustrate a children's book. It shows a Dutch family in silhouette, the father chasing a dog from their home with a stick. The silhouette was a popular art form in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, offering a relatively cheap and simple method of portraiture during a period of expanding bourgeois culture. By the early 20th century, it had become associated with children's book illustration, retaining something of its earlier democratic appeal. Bodenheim's silhouette drawings are simple and direct, yet her characters' clothes are detailed enough to suggest a historical setting. The rigid family structure and violent expulsion of the dog could be seen as an allegory of early 20th-century Dutch society. Historians study the changing meaning of art through time by analyzing the social context of its production, looking at economic history, institutional records, and cultural trends.