Roeier in een boot met lantaarn bij nacht 1865 - 1930

Jac van Looij made this sketch of a rower in a boat at night with pen and ink. The image hints at the burgeoning urban life of the Netherlands at the turn of the century. There is the immediate sense of a working-class figure performing labor but also a sense of mystery created by the darkness and indistinctness. The single lantern hints at illumination and yet obscures as much as it reveals. In a country defined by its waterways, it’s easy to imagine the artist encountering this figure and being struck by this visual juxtaposition. Van Looij, trained at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, would have seen this subject as a modern one. The growth of cities brought not only commerce and wealth, but also isolation and alienation. We can look to sources from the period, like newspapers and police records, to more fully reconstruct the world inhabited by both artist and rower. The meaning of art is contingent on its social context.