1850, Francis W. Edmonds, Courtship in New Amsterdam -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: Edmonds imagined this scene in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, as New York City was named before the English seized control in 1664. Dressed in the distinctive outfit of a “knickerbocker” (the popular term for a Dutch settler), a young man attempts to gain the attention of a woman who is attentively knitting. Contemporary viewers found humor in the suitor's ostentatious outfit and behavior in comparison with the modesty of his counterpart. An intertwined vine grows behind them, a symbol of budding love that appears in 17th-century Dutch genre painting, from which Edmonds drew his artistic inspiration.
1850, Francis W. Edmonds, Courtship in New Amsterdam -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: Edmonds imagined this scene in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, as New York City was named before the English seized control in 1664. Dressed in the distinctive outfit of a “knickerbocker” (the popular term for a Dutch settler), a young man attempts to gain the attention of a woman who is attentively knitting. Contemporary viewers found humor in the suitor's ostentatious outfit and behavior in comparison with the modesty of his counterpart. An intertwined vine grows behind them, a symbol of budding love that appears in 17th-century Dutch genre painting, from which Edmonds drew his artistic inspiration.