It is an album containing congratulatory messages for architect Pierre Cuypers. For Cuypers’ 70th birthday (in 1897), the Hague Art Circle collected contributions from various architects abroad. According to the title page, it contains “the expressions of tribute paid to HIM by his foreign artistic colleagues and admirers.”
Architects from London, Budapest, Vienna, Stockholm, Stuttgart, and even Moscow, among others, took the trouble to congratulate Pierre Cuypers. In return, they received a card from the Hague Art Circle with the pre-printed title text “Dr. P.J.H. Cuypers 1827 16-5 1897.”
Some of the messages are difficult to decipher due to the handwriting, and others are hard to read because they are written in Hungarian or Swedish, for example. But it is clear that this is a historical document that illustrates Cuypers’ extensive network and his admirers!
The Cuypers family has often surprised the Cuypers House with wonderful donations, such as the painted triptych featuring the family coats of arms of Cuypers and Alberdingk Thijm (2012), glass negatives of photographs depicting family members (2016 and 2020), and a chair from Cuypers’ studio in which he himself posed for a photograph around 1910 (2020). All of these objects are on display in the museum’s permanent exhibition.
Ever since the museum’s founding in 1932, the Cuypers Collection has been expanded through donations from various family members. The Cuypers House is deeply grateful to them for this.