Men at work in Dutch art, or keeping one's nose to the grindstone

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In the process of codifying popular notions of tradesmen, the prints also constructed a vivid imagery of masculinity. Regardless of format, they nearly always showed work and workshop in masculine terms. In doing so, the prints "naturalized" ordinary, productive artisanal labor as predominantly male.

Paintings about Work

Given the ubiquity of prints dealing with craftsmen at work, it was all but inevitable that seventeenth-century Dutch painters would address the topic. The transformation from ink to oil brought with it both a more complicated idealization of the worker and a preference for skilled work. (38) Skilled workers required specific locations, settled spaces for manufacturing as well as selling, which oil painting was particularly well suited to describe. In turn, the descriptive capabilities of oil painting may have contributed to a shift in imagery. Although etching and engraving have the potential for detailed background description, none of the prints examined here (with the exception of Ostade's etching, Fig. 14) establishes such a full sense of place. The very different uses to which paintings were put encouraged other changes. Whereas broadsides were treated casually, and high-end prints were usually destined for an album or book, a genre painting was generally meant to be displayed on the walls of a middle- or upper-middle-class home. Simply placing the image of a tradesman on an owner's wall implied an affirmation of the trade depicted and an engagement in public discussion about what labor means for society.

All of the artisanal occupations chosen for painting were based in guilds (a claim that cannot be made for depictions of work in prints). Cobblers, for example, belonged to the Saint Crispinus guild and metalworkers to the Saint Eligius guild. Long important in the Netherlands, guilds continued strong, particularly in the middle years of the seventeenth century, which was roughly the same period that the paintings were produced. They involved a large percentage of the population in most towns of the republic and formed an essential component of Dutch commercial capitalism. Designed to protect employment, regulate labor conditions, and provide insurance, guilds played an important role in establishing socioeconomic order. (39) A painting of an artisan on a burgher's wall, therefore, would have been read not merely as "cobbler" or "blacksmith" but as signifier of the guild to which the artisan belonged, and thus as signifier of the artisan's formal, collective identity.

Sophisticated Dutch artists and critics, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, were probably aware of the antique precedents for these artisan paintings. (40) Pliny recounts that the Greek painter Peiraikos had developed the low and presumably comic genre of "barbers' and cobblers' shops." (41) Although the category had drawn criticism from those who termed the paintings "mere trifles"--anticipating the debates in early modern Italy and France over hierarchies of subject matter--fame and high prices were Peiraikos's rewards. Even though debates about the quotidian as a worthy subject for painting rarely engaged commentators in the Dutch Republic, the antique precedent did give painting about everyday labor an additional, historical justification all its own. (42) Similarly, a knowledge of the ancient subjects may have contributed to reflection on the appropriateness of one type of artisan representation over another, as part of the larger conversation about the schilderachtig, or "picture-worthy."