From the exhibition
Brief to an Inhabitant of Exile Land: On the Marriage of His Majesty Willem Kaaskooper
· Amsterdam, 1841

This Dutch satirical pamphlet mocks the marriage of former King Willem I to Countess d'Oultremont, a union that scandalized the Dutch court. The title page employs absurdist nomenclature—renaming the king "Willem Kaaskooper" (William Cheesebuyer)—to ridicule both the groom and his exile. Published as a cheap broadside in Amsterdam for mere cents, this work descends from the Northern European tradition of political caricature and lampooning that produced Gillray and Rowlandson's savage prints. Such satirical broadsides reached common readers through simple typography and biting wordplay rather than elaborate engraving, prefiguring the mass-produced comic sheets and penny dreadfuls that would dominate nineteenth-century popular print culture.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/