Restauratie van het Haagsche Plein (The Hague's Square Restoration)

This wood engraving satirizes architectural plans for government ministry buildings on The Hague's central square. Theunis and Nijhoff's design places a bear in a classical gateway while a rooster and hedgehog perch atop the adjacent ministerial structures—a visual mockery of the scheme's pretensions. The Dutch caption "Om de goé lien niet te verdwaazen" ("Not to confuse the good people") identifies three targets: the Ministry of Colonies, Justice, and the High Court. Part of a long European tradition of political graphic satire descending from Hogarth and Gillray, this print weaponizes anthropomorphic absurdity to ridicule bureaucratic folly. Such caricatures—combining architectural critique with animal symbolism—directly prefigured modern editorial cartooning and comic art's use of visual metaphor for institutional critique.