De Ryke Boer van Schevelingen (The Rich Farmer of Schevelingen)

A Dutch hand-colored etching depicting a portly farmer carrying a basket of five children on his back while walking barefoot across dunes, accompanied by dogs and a distant seaside village. The caption reads 'Who buys my last zoo' (Who buys my last zoo/brood). This satirical print mocks rural population and class anxieties during the French Revolutionary period, when Dutch society faced political upheaval and economic strain. The grotesque enlargement of the farmer's body and the cartoonish distortion of his offspring exemplify the Northern European tradition of moral and social caricature descended from Hogarth and developed through German and Netherlandish prints. The image conflates rural fertility, economic desperation, and social burden—coded anxieties about the poor and their reproduction—within the conventions of hand-colored popular satire that would influence later comic traditions.