Goederen en een vrouw in zeventiende-eeuwse kleding c. 1846 - 1882

Cornelis Springer created this pencil and watercolour sketch, titled "Goods and a woman in seventeenth-century clothing", sometime in the 19th century. The work is interesting when we consider the cultural context in which Springer was working. Springer was part of a larger trend within 19th-century Dutch art of looking back to the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. The Netherlands had undergone significant political and social change in the intervening centuries, and artists like Springer, who were part of the Romantic movement, were searching for something authentic in their national past. The imagery used here, the clothing, the jug, and the bundled packages are visual codes representing this earlier Golden Age. These objects were now viewed through a nostalgic lens. Historical sources, like inventories of estates or costume books of the period, would help us understand how accurate Springer's vision of the past actually was. What we can say for sure, is that this image tells us as much about the 19th-century Dutch cultural identity, as it does about the 17th.