The true story behind the 'Dutch landscape' of the Jeroen Krabbé stamp

1. In the article of December 8, 2024, I described the remarkable background story of the painting 'Dutch Landscape' (nvph 1908) by painter Jeroen Krabbé. By accident, the painting ended up in reverse on the stamp.

The discovery! The error was discovered only three months after the stamp was issued by Maximum Card collector Ronald van der Leden (1958 – 2020) of the Association for Children's Stamps and Maximaphily. While affixing the stamp to the picture postcard (which was only available after a three-month wait), Van der Leden discovered the difference between the landscapes on the stamp and the picture postcard. PostNL was certainly not pleased with the discovery! Through a computer technical intervention, the mirrored stamp on the maximum card has been replaced by an 'un-mirrored stamp', resulting in a seemingly correct maximum card after all. In the article of December 8, which I sent to Jeroen Krabbé for reading and assessment to receive a response from him, a free interpretation of the painting was included that arose due to a lack of information from the PostNL press release: On the left stands a farmhouse with a thatched roof, and to the right of it a green meadow with four cows. Above it, yellow arable land with green clouds in the sky above the landscape. Bird's-eye view landscape A week after I posed my question to Krabbé, I received the accompanying reply from the painter, with a literally eye-opening background story: “Dear Bate, what a fun research project you sent me, namely unraveling my 'Dutch landscape stamp' (nvph 1908). I will help you with it. I once took a balloon ride in the area where I have a holiday home near Dalfsen. What struck me were the defined, rectangular patterns of meadows and arable land. They lay beneath me like a patchwork quilt in the landscape. This view of the landscape, unknown to me, led me to decide to make a painting of it from above.” From a high vantage point (bird's-eye view), you have a view of colorful flower bulb fields and green meadows, arable land, and forests like a patchwork quilt below you (nvph 2250/51). Only a part of the original painting ended up on the stamp. The maximum cards were postmarked in Amsterdam because Krabbé lives in Amsterdam. With information from the painter, we now know that it should have been Dalfsen. The yellow, diagonal upward line in the middle is a road that runs south from Dalfsen, passing through the fields towards Heino with a few right-angled bends. Above the blue area, the road makes a sharp turn to the right. Four cows are standing in the grass. A peculiarity of the depicted cows in the meadow is the fact that the cows are shown from the side, whereas the grassland is viewed from above. The 'poetic license' that Krabbé employs here as a painter is the use of the so-called 'flip technique', in which the top view and the 'side view' coincide in a single image. The brown area with a dotted pattern next to the cows is arable land where potatoes are grown. On the yellow-colored area, rapeseed is being cultivated and is in bloom. In the yellow area at the bottom left, there is still some scrub. The green clouds are heavy clouds, which I believe 'carry' rain. The clouds above the potato field were also placed at this location using the 'flip technique'. At the end of Krabbé's response, he refers to the mirrored image of the painting on the stamp: “It was quite dramatic when I discovered that the stamp had been printed 'in reverse'. It has been very annoying to have to rectify that afterwards. I hope this info has been helpful to you. Good luck with your stamp blog. Bye, Jeroen Krabbé.” Patchwork: mistake after mistake! * The still reasonably recognizable patchwork landscape by painter Krabbé, corresponding to reality, consists of richly colored forms and/or geometric planes. * On the map below, a road heading south with several right-angled bends connects Dalfsen with Heino. Meadows and fields lie on either side of this road. Mirror printing more frequently applied to stamps A mirrored image has ended up on a stamp before. The reason or cause is unknown to me. The eight stamps of the Veluwe issue (nvph 2282/83) are based on engravings from the 8-volume German standard zoological work Brehm's Tierleben (1900). A number of them are placed in mirror image on the stamp. One of the two young red deer did not make it onto the stamp. In the apple and pear variety issue (nvph 3431/40), mirror printing is more difficult to recognize. * The stem of the stamp pear points in the opposite direction to the maximum card pear, at the bottom right of the maximum card. Some difference can also be detected between the pear cross-sections. * The stems of the stamp pear and maximum card pear (top left) point in opposite directions. The position of the shadows also differs. The girl on the children's stamp is drawing with her left hand, whereas the girl in the original photo is drawing with her right hand. Why, after all, was a left-handed drawing girl placed on the stamp? In this position, she corresponds to the 'reading position,' as an image is usually viewed from left to right.