Hooiopper c. 1894 - 1895

Curator: Here we have Pieter Dupont’s “Hooiopper,” painted circa 1894-1895. Dupont captures a humble haystack using oil paint. Editor: It’s quite a striking image. There's an incredible, almost tactile quality to the texture; I immediately think of Van Gogh's expressive brushwork. The layers of impasto create this powerful sense of the physical material of hay itself. Curator: Precisely. Dupont worked en plein-air, likely on a small scale, to directly engage with this landscape subject. His technique places the work within the post-impressionist movement, especially how he isolates a commonplace subject, like a haystack, in order to imbue it with the weight of significance. These subjects are never politically neutral but deeply entrenched within the landscape of labor and economics. Editor: It is really the physical application of the paint that draws my attention. You can almost feel the heft and density of the hay in Dupont's application. I see the work involved; the deliberate process mimics the labour involved in agriculture itself. Do you think there’s something subversive in that? Taking that ‘low’ subject and elevating it to art? Curator: Dupont positions a rural motif—the haystack—within a tradition previously dedicated to portraiture of wealthy patrons and history paintings that glorified rulers. I suspect there is indeed a bit of subversiveness within the social act of depicting the life and materials around him. In a way, he turns the artistic lens toward the land itself and away from aristocratic narratives. Editor: Looking closer, I notice the interesting way the ground around the stack is described: turbulent strokes contrasting with the more linear rendering of the hay. It almost suggests an undercurrent of restless energy or perhaps precarity. The materials become metaphors for larger existential issues. Curator: The painting reflects both a specific place and a broader social awareness of land, labor, and the changing dynamics of the Dutch rural economy in the late 19th century. The haystack transforms from a simple agrarian object into a signifier of the lived realities of the period. Editor: I like that; seeing the haystack not just as something idyllic or quaint, but really reckoning with how it exists as part of a larger material network and a testament to labor. Curator: It makes one consider who controls land and resources and the societal narratives being told—or not told—through the subjects artists chose.