Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1892

This postcard was sent to the artist Philip Zilcken in 1892 by the French artist Félix Hilaire Buhot. Postcards like this one were a product of the expanding postal systems in Europe, intended to facilitate easy communication. The card itself speaks to the international art world of the late 19th century. Buhot, a Frenchman, is writing to Zilcken, who, though of Dutch heritage, was born in The Hague, the location of this letter’s delivery, and was working as an artist and art critic. The card itself was printed for use in Great Britain. What we see in this simple piece of mail is a network of artists and critics, enabled by international institutions such as the postal service and the art world. These were the forces that shaped artistic production in Europe at the time. To understand it better, we could look at the postal records of the time, or the exhibition reviews written by Zilcken himself.