Raden Saleh and the Dutch: protected artist or political prisoner?

In the context of a colonized nation Raden Saleh had the exceptional opportunity to realize his chosen vocation as an artist. Before retracing his life in The Hague between 1830 and 1839, the period mostly dealt with in this article, the author first 'revisits' Java and Sunda of the years...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Archipel 2005-01, Vol.69, p.151-258
Main Author: Scalliet, Marie-Odette
Format: Article
Language:fre
Subjects:
Artists
Biographies
Colonization
Cultural contact
Government policy
Indonesia
Java
Material culture
Painters
Prisoners
Saleh, Raden
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Summary:In the context of a colonized nation Raden Saleh had the exceptional opportunity to realize his chosen vocation as an artist. Before retracing his life in The Hague between 1830 and 1839, the period mostly dealt with in this article, the author first 'revisits' Java and Sunda of the years 1820-1829, the year in which Saleh departed for Europe. Although Raden Saleh became the most illustrious Javanese to be entrusted to Europeans, he was not the only one. His nephew Raden Mas Said, also a relative of the regent of Semarang, arrived at Buitenzorg during the same period and remained attached to Reinwardt for a few years, while Raden Saleh was entrusted to the government painter Antoine Payen, whom he followed to Bandung in 1822. Another Javanese boy, the son of the late regent of Surabaya, was apparently 'adopted' by the commisaris generaal Elout in 1817. He accompanied his adoptive father to the Netherlands in 1819 and returned to Java in 1825. When Payen departed from Java in 1826, he left Saleh behind in a government employ, probably in the residency office of the Priangan Regencies at Cianjur where the future Javanologist Carl Gericke met him in 1827. Forty years after the publication of Jeanne de Loos-Haaxman's article on the stay of Raden Saleh in The Hague, it is not superfluous to give a progress report on the current state of research, in order to revise and to supplement this crucial period in the training of the artist preceding his years of additional studies and blooming in Germany and in Paris. In addition, a re-reading of the official documents was necessary to establish the progress of the artist, and the motivation for the colonial bureaucrats to extend the stay of their protégé beyond the two years envisaged initially. Herself a victim of colonial prejudices when she began her work on Raden Saleh's biography in Batavia prior to the Second World War, Loos-Haaxman emphasized the generosity and 'tinted laxism' of the Dutch and went on to help forge the image of a spoiled child with expensive tastes who repeatedly put his guardians' patience to the test, yet without denying the artistic abilities of Raden Saleh. With the passing of time, it is easy to see that Loos-Haaxman fell into the pitfall of stereotypes, according to which the colonized subject is a big child which the paternalist colonizer must guide and spare at the same time. Although it is a seemingly impossible task to bore the complex personality of Raden Saleh, there is no doubt tha
ISSN:0044-8613