Een slechte beursdag 1848 - 1865

Diederik Franciscus Jamin made this watercolor titled 'Een slechte beursdag', or 'A Bad Day on the Market' at an unknown date. The image encapsulates a nineteenth-century anxiety surrounding the vicissitudes of the financial market. The visual codes are clear. We see a man slumped at his desk, surrounded by papers, in what seems to be a well-appointed, if somewhat gloomy, room. The very image of the burdened bourgeois is a figure well-known throughout Europe at this time. One can imagine that Jamin made this in the Netherlands. It is a culture which had long been associated with the rise of the mercantile class. The economic structure of the time, predicated on speculation and investment, made men like this one vulnerable to the unpredictable nature of the market. Jamin’s painting, in its stark realism, subtly critiques a social order dependent on such volatile forces. To understand this work better, one might research Dutch economic history of the 19th century, focusing on financial panics and their social impact. This painting is contingent on the social and institutional context in which it was produced.