Schets van een zittende man, op de rug gezien 1770 - 1825

Simon Andreas Krausz made this sketch of a seated man with graphite on paper sometime between 1760 and 1825. In its time, this drawing could have served a variety of purposes, from informal social record, to study for a more finished artwork. Krausz was born in Hungary but lived most of his life in Amsterdam where he worked as a drawing instructor. The Dutch tradition of genre painting gave artists many opportunities to depict the lives of everyday people, including the poor, whom we might imagine the man in this drawing to be. As a teacher, Krausz would have been part of the institutional structures that supported artistic production. Drawings like this give us a window into the daily life of an artist and his relationship with Dutch society. By consulting inventories, records of sales, and other documents from the time, we can reconstruct the place of art in 18th-century Europe.