A Servant Girl Scrubbing a Brass Cauldron 1637 - 1664

Thomas van Apshoven painted "A Servant Girl Scrubbing a Brass Cauldron" sometime in the mid-17th century. The painting’s realism places it within the Dutch Golden Age, when genre scenes were popular. The scene depicts a servant girl kneeling to scrub a large brass cauldron. A man stands close by, offering direction. What does it mean to depict the working classes in this way? Genre painting served a social function. We see that it was meant to subtly reinforce the social hierarchy of the time. The composition is divided into the well-lit foreground where the scrubbing is taking place and the darker background where other servants are working. Are we meant to understand that the foregrounded woman is somehow more worthy of our attention? To better understand this painting, we can look to household inventories of the time and to the records of Dutch art academies. By understanding the institutions that shaped the image, we understand the social values it expresses.