Issue: Mauritshuis Bicentenary Celebration
Date of issue: 21 February 2022
Appearance: sheet with six stamps in six different designs, with value 1 for post up to and including 20 grams for a destination within the Netherlands
Item number: 420262
Design: Studio Maud van Rossum, Amsterdam
Photography: Mauritshuis, The Hague
Lithography: Marc Gijzen, Voorburg
On 21 February 2021, PostNL issued a new stamp sheet with six stamps about the famous flower still-lifes at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Mauritshuis bicentenary celebration is being issued to mark two centuries since the museum opened its doors to the public. The denomination on these stamps is ‘1’, the denomination for items weighing up to 20g destined for the Netherlands. The stamp sheet was designed by Studio Maud van Rossum 
from Amsterdam.
The Mauritshuis in The Hague houses a world-famous collection of 17th-Century Dutch paintings. The collection is on display in two historic buildings in The Hague: the Mauritshuis and the Galerij Prins Willem V. The Mauritshuis is a 17th-century city palace on the Plein, and the Galerij Prins Willem V is an 18th-century museum on the Buitenhof.
The history of the collection in the Mauritshuis begins in the Galerij Prins Willem V. This gallery was opened in 1774 and was the first museum open to the public in the Netherlands. This is where Stadtholder Willem V displayed his collection of paintings to the general public. His son, King William I, donated a large number of these works to the Dutch state. In 1822, 200 years ago this year, the collection moved to the Mauritshuis. The most famous paintings, such as The Bull by Paulus Potter, View of 
Haarlem with Bleaching Fields by Jacob van Ruisdael, Two African Men by Rembrandt, View of Delft and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer are always on display. There are also special exhibitions on different subjects that change three times a year.
Opening on 17 February 2022 – the anniversary year –, the In Full Bloom exhibition will focus on the most beautiful floral still-lifes from the Mauritshuis collection. In the 17th Century, still-life paintings with flowers were a specialised genre in the Low Countries. It emerged in Middelburg and Antwerp and then also became popular further north. To celebrate the bicentenary, a flower installation inspired by the collection of paintings is being built in and around the Mauritshuis. The façade of the Mauritshuis will also be adorned with an ‘impossible bouquet’ of flowers, consisting of sustainable imitation flowers combining spring, summer and autumn, just like the still-lifes from the 17th Century.
‘The Mauritshuis has a fantastic website that even allows you to visit the museum online,’ said stamp designer Maud van Rossum. “They took advantage of the lockdown to digitise the entire museum. So you can take a virtual walking tour through the exhibition rooms from the comfort of your own sofa. That same evening, I was able to view each flower still-life in the collection on my own screen.’
In 2020, graphic designer Van Rossum designed the stamp issue that celebrated the 450th anniversary of the publication of the world’s first atlas. In 2021, she created the stamps for Queen Máxima’s 50th birthday. ‘This is a completely different subject,’ says Van Rossum about the Mauritshuis bicentenary celebration stamp sheet.
The stamps are available while stocks last at the post office counter in Bruna shops and at www.postnl.nl/bijzondere-postzegels [in Dutch].
Technical Details:
Stamp size: 25 x 36mm
Sheet size: 108 x 150mm
Paper: normal with phosphor print
Gum: gummed
Printing technique: offset
Printing colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black
Edition: 95,000 sheets
Appearance: sheet of six stamps in six different designs
Studio: Maud van Rossum, Amsterdam
Photography: Mauritshuis, The Hague
Lithography: Marc Gijzen, Voorburg
Printing company: Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé B.V., Haarlem
Item number: 420262
