Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken before 1894

This is a briefkaart, or postcard, to Philip Zilcken, written by Grada Hermina Marius, likely in the Netherlands around the late 19th or early 20th century, judging by the postmark. The existence of this object is a testament to the changing social function of art in this period. The Dutch Golden Age saw an explosion in artistic production but with an emphasis on commissions for wealthy patrons. The later rise of art criticism, of which Marius was an important practitioner, saw a broadening of the audience for art and a related increase in interest in its social function. The existence of cheap, mass-produced objects such as this postcard, which could have featured an image of a painting, allowed for a democratization of art consumption. To understand its significance fully, we'd want to know more about Zilcken and Marius, about the image that may have been on the front of the card and about the institutional shifts that made the circulation of images like this possible. It is through research such as this that we can appreciate the role of art as contingent on social and institutional context.