Gevoel (Sense of Touch) - Cornelis Dusart

A mezzotint by Cornelis Dusart from his series on the five senses, depicting a humorous domestic interaction representing the sense of touch.

This mezzotint by Cornelis Dusart belongs to a series depicting the five senses, specifically representing 'Gevoel' or the sense of touch. Dusart, a pupil of Adriaen van Ostade, maintained the tradition of Dutch genre art, focusing on the daily lives of the peasantry. The composition shows an elderly man leaning over a woman who is occupied with her knitting. His hand rests upon her shoulder, a gesture that serves as the literal and thematic focus of the work. The interaction is characteristic of the period's interest in moralising or humorous depictions of human behaviour.

The technical execution relies on the mezzotint process, which allows for soft gradations of tone and a velvety texture. This medium was particularly effective for creating the atmospheric lighting seen in the interior setting. The figures are rendered with a focus on their expressive facial features and the textures of their clothing. The background includes simple domestic objects, such as jugs on a shelf, which provide context to the scene without distracting from the central interaction.

Dusart captures a moment of social intimacy, common in the tavern and domestic scenes popular in the late seventeenth-century Netherlands. The work avoids idealisation, presenting the figures with a degree of caricature that was typical of the Haarlem school. By choosing the sense of touch as his subject, Dusart explores the physical proximity between the two figures, using the act of knitting as a foil for the man's intrusive presence. The print demonstrates the artist's skill in handling light and shadow to create a sense of volume and depth within a confined space. It remains a representative example of the graphic output of the Dutch Golden Age, where printmaking served as a primary means of disseminating genre scenes to a wider audience.