Courtship in New Amsterdam (Primary Title)
Francis W. Edmonds, American, 1806 - 1863 (Artist)
Francis 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.
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