Portret van een onbekende man met een fiets c. 1890 - 1905

Jac. van Faassen, a photographer working in the Netherlands, made this carte-de-visite of an unknown man with a bicycle. These small portraits were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and this one offers a glimpse into the rise of cycling culture. The man's attire suggests a middle-class status, with his bowler hat and suit. The bicycle, a relatively new invention at the time, symbolizes modernity and personal freedom, offering a new way to experience leisure and access to the countryside. But it was more than that. The bicycle was also bound up with ideas about female emancipation. Van Faassen's studio, with its address printed on the card, was a commercial enterprise catering to this growing market. To understand the image fully, one might look at historical sources, such as fashion magazines, bicycle advertisements, and local archives, to reconstruct the social context and meanings of cycling in the Netherlands at the turn of the century. Art history is so much more than just looking at the art.