Postcard Princess Marijke First Steps Soestdijk 1948 Ten Have

Postcard with a colour portrait of Princess Marijke, the youngest child of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, made at Soestdijk Palace in December 1948. The front shows the child in a light blue winter coat with a matching bonnet, looking down at her own feet in the grass. The card was published by Uitgeverij W. ten Have N.V. in Amsterdam and bears the number 761. The corners are folded and bumped, and several creases run through the image area.

The card belongs to a series that pictured the childhood of the royal children, a genre widely circulated in the post-war years. The caption De eerste stapjes van Prinses Marijke, the first steps of Princess Marijke, places the image firmly in the register of the family album rather than state photography: not the succession to the throne, but an ordinary moment from the nursery. Princess Marijke was born in 1947 and from 1963 was given the name Christina; on this card from 1948 she still carries her original given name.