Regnskab 1847 1847

This is a page from an account book, Regnskab 1847, made with ink on paper by Martinus Rørbye. Rørbye, a Danish Golden Age painter, died the year after this was made. Account books like this are fascinating documents of social life. They reflect a culture of commerce and record transactions between people. We can learn a lot about Denmark in the 1840s by examining such an artifact. What kind of economy does it suggest? What goods were being traded, and in what quantities? How much did things cost? How many people were employed? This is a piece that can tell us about the politics of imagery, about the social conditions that shape artistic production. Art historians draw on a range of archival sources to understand how such pieces fit into the broader social and institutional contexts of their time. The meaning of art is always contingent on those contexts.