Briefkaart aan August Allebé Possibly 1888

This is a letter written by Jérôme Alexander Sillem, likely in 1888, to August Allebé, director of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, the State Academy of Fine Arts, in Amsterdam. Looking closely, the postal markings are intriguing. You can see the official crest of the Netherlands, together with a postage stamp. The overprinting tells us that the Academy was part of a larger network of institutions, overseen and regulated by the state. It is important to remember that institutions like the Rijksakademie had a huge impact on the development of art and culture, training artists and shaping their ideas of what art should be. The Rijksakademie was founded in the 17th century to promote Dutch art, so letters like this one can tell us a lot about how the art world was structured. To really understand the significance of this letter, we could investigate the institutional history of the Rijksakademie, and study the biographies of Sillem and Allebé. This would allow us to understand the social and institutional contexts that shaped their lives.