Brief aan Lambertus Hardenberg (1822-1900) 1827 - 1891

This letter was written by Johannes Bosboom to Lambertus Hardenberg, likely sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century. The letter’s contents are a bit of a mystery, but we might wonder, what can a mundane object like this tell us about the world it came from? The Netherlands in the 1800s was a place of increasing literacy and a flourishing print culture. Yet handwriting still mattered in the conduct of business and personal relationships. Note Bosboom’s elegant script, evidence of his education and social standing. The letter format itself speaks to developing postal systems and networks of communication. Who were these men, and what was their place in the social fabric of the Dutch art world? To answer these questions, we would want to dig into archival sources – letters, business records, census data – to reconstruct the lives and relationships of Bosboom and Hardenberg. This is how the art historian pieces together the context that gives meaning to even the simplest scrap of paper.