Kaartspelende boeren 1847 - 1932

Curator: Right now, we’re looking at “Kaartspelende boeren,” or “Card Playing Farmers,” an etching made by William Unger sometime between 1847 and 1932. It’s part of the Rijksmuseum’s collection. What's your first take? Editor: Honestly? It looks like somebody's about to get cheated! There's so much happening. A little murky, maybe, but filled with earthy tones and mischievous energy. It feels like a scene ripe for a bar fight, doesn't it? Curator: Unger situates us right within a familiar nineteenth-century visual vocabulary centered around class dynamics. Genre painting often idealizes or romanticizes rural life, but it also functions as a means for the rising bourgeois class to study, critique, and define itself against the backdrop of the peasant class. Notice anything particular about who "belongs" in the core card game huddle versus who is in the shadowy outskirts of the scene? Editor: Good point! The guys in the game are all cramped together, you can almost smell the sweat and beer, right? Everyone's laughing or squinting suspiciously. And then you've got this looming figure in the background, almost spectral, watching...judging, maybe. Like he knows the game is rigged. Plus, someone shoved in a cart just off the main game! Very interesting touch of a lived interior here! Curator: It's about access, isn't it? Social, economic, geographic...Consider who can participate in leisure, who can even watch leisure happening, and who is effectively locked out. Think of it as an intersectional reading: class, gender, even age plays a role in how we each engage with spaces like this. What power dynamics are implicit to spaces like this, for better or worse? Editor: Yeah! The way the light hits that looming guy…it's almost biblical. He's this kind of grim, judgmental shadow over the whole thing. The funny part is, it's just a bunch of dudes playing cards. It's just folks, you know? Curator: Right, this isn't history painting depicting some great national drama; it’s ordinary life, freighted with larger implications. Even the humble card game is itself not separate from political realities. Unger, whether he intended it or not, gives us the visual cues to tease those tensions out. Editor: Okay, I am now convinced that this ordinary snapshot gives more to reflect upon than I imagined initially. Now, all this talk about history and power… I need to find a nice unassuming bar!