Een zieke in bed

About this artwork

verzamelaarsmerk, verso, gestempeld: Lugt 2228

Art Historical Context

Carel Frederik Curtenius Bentinck’s “Een zieke in bed” offers a quiet, intimate glimpse into a moment of illness. Created as a lithograph sometime between 1824 and 1849, the print shows a figure resting in bed, rendered with the soft tonal gradations that lithography made possible. The medium, invented only a few decades earlier, allowed artists to draw directly on stone and produce multiple impressions, bringing detailed images to a broader public than traditional engraving or painting could reach. Measuring 348 mm in height, the work carries the verso collector’s mark Lugt 2228, evidence of its journey through private collections. Such marks help trace the print’s history and remind viewers that even modest sheets were valued and preserved. Bentinck’s choice of subject reflects the nineteenth-century interest in everyday domestic scenes, where personal moments of vulnerability were considered worthy of artistic attention. Today the lithograph invites modern visitors to consider how illness was experienced and observed in earlier times, preserved through a technique that democratized art.