Kop van een man met een snor 1865 - 1913

Bramine Hubrecht made this pencil drawing, Head of a Man with a Moustache, in the Netherlands in the late 19th or early 20th century. Drawings like this were a staple of academic artistic training at the time. We might ask, what did it mean to learn to draw in this way? Across Europe, the art academy system taught students to represent the human figure with accuracy and precision. Through this kind of practice, they were meant to internalize aesthetic values and norms of representation. But we should remember that art academies were selective institutions that upheld traditional hierarchies of gender and class. The system favored some artists and some kinds of art over others. This drawing gives us a glimpse into that history and prompts us to ask: who was included and who was excluded from the story of art? We can find answers by researching the archives of art academies and by exploring the careers of artists like Hubrecht. Considering the social context helps us to understand the meaning of this image today.