Onvoltooide Zitting der 2e Kamer (Unfinished Session of the Second Chamber)

This Dutch wood engraving satirizes construction delays at the new parliament building. Gentlemen in top hats stand amid scaffolding, tools, and rubble while workers labor slowly in the background—a visual joke about bureaucratic inefficiency. The caption reads: "They loaf about scheming how to get home, and meanwhile the building of his own house stands still." The print descends from the European tradition of political satire established by Hogarth and perfected by Gillray and Daumier: using exaggerated figures, cluttered domestic or public spaces, and pointed wordplay to mock contemporary institutions. Such prints circulated widely as single sheets and in periodicals, establishing the visual language—caricatured faces, symbolic objects, crowded compositions—that would later define the comic strip and editorial cartoon.