Brief aan August Allebé Possibly 1885

This letter was written by Jan Veth, around 1885. The handwritten note is addressed to August Allebé, who was director of the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam at the time. Veth likely wrote it to him from Bussum. This is a personal note written by an artist to a figure of authority in an institution in which the artist had a vested interest. As such, it illustrates how patronage and bureaucracy operated in the Dutch art world at this time. The letter may seem like a simple form of correspondence, but it is also a social record. It tells us about the institutional politics of the Rijksakademie, which was emerging as a vital cultural institution in the Netherlands. To better understand this document, we might look into records of the Rijksakademie, as well as correspondence between other artists and administrators at the time. Letters like these are invaluable resources for understanding the social and institutional context of art.