Lanciers 1833 - 1911

Curator: Here we have "Lanciers," a lithograph print created sometime between 1833 and 1911 by Brepols & Dierckx zoon, currently held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It’s whimsical, like illustrations from a children's storybook! The horses are almost pink, and those lancer uniforms practically shout with their yellow and blue. It's cheerful, but with a touch of military formality. Curator: Absolutely. It is interesting to note the lithographic process; it democratized printmaking, making images more widely accessible, and was employed for these sorts of commercial prints depicting fashion, military uniforms, and other scenes from daily life, for consumption by the burgeoning middle classes. Editor: You can almost smell the printer's ink and feel the texture of the paper. There's a repetition to it as well with the arrangement; I see how each figure, frozen in these almost cartoonish poses, tells a bit of a different story or highlights different aspects of the Lancers’ appearance, maybe for identification. It is sort of an early “spotter’s guide.” Curator: Precisely. These kinds of prints had significant commercial value as reference material. Note, too, the almost mass-produced feel created by the flat colors and limited shading. The lithographic process allowed for quicker reproduction at a lower cost, directly appealing to emerging consumer markets. Editor: And you feel that with the repetition—they're not individual portraits, they're components, almost like pieces in a set, which kind of pulls me out of Romanticism and plants my feet more in a consumerist world that would come. Curator: Exactly. Romanticism still informs the aesthetic in ways, of course; there's a genre-painting aspect in how it evokes military themes, however. But this ultimately points toward mass consumption; what at first appears individual or unique gets repeated into almost a collectible product, or at least, a reproducible artifact. Editor: A bit sad to think about that loss of the original, even. Still, they look like toy soldiers, each with their miniature world of possibilities! Curator: Indeed. That blending of function, utility, artistry, and consumption really shapes our perspective. Editor: I feel almost as though it's teaching me to observe these historical figures in new ways, recognizing they weren’t untouchable.