Junggesellen - Leiden or Bachelor from Leiden

Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.

These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.

This colored print depicts a man in tattered clothing and hat trying to thread a needle. He is seated in a cluttered, decrepit cottage with exposed ceiling beams. Next to him is a candlestick holder and lantern. There are jugs, baskets, pots, cups, fruit and shoes scattered around the room. The English traslation of the German title is the "Joys of Matrimony."

Johann Friederich Hesse was an artist, lithographer & printer active in Berlin 1838-1870. He produced popular prints of Martin Luther and genre drawings and worked with publisher W. Zawitz.

W. Zawitz was a publisher of books, lithographs, and maps in Germany ca 1840-1870.

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