Hoved af en skægget mand med bredskygget hat og pibe 1872

Frans Schwartz made this etching of a bearded man with a wide-brimmed hat and pipe in 1872. It is difficult to know the public role of this drawing. Was it a sketch done for himself? Was it intended for reproduction in newspapers or books? Was it made for an exhibition? There is a Dutch quality to the image: the low vantage point, the careful, economic lines, the rakish angle of the hat, and the subject matter all have precedents in 17th-century Dutch genre painting. This would have been a well-known institutional history to artists trained in the Western tradition, making this drawing either an homage or an ironic comment on the art of the past. Without further research into the artist and the cultural context, it is impossible to know more about this work. As an art historian, my job is to delve deeper into the cultural and institutional histories of art.