Indonesian Fine Art
46 Raden Saleh (Indonesian, circa 1811-1880)
Portrait of Dirk Cornelis Noordziek (The Hague 1816-1864 Madiun) oil on panel, 36x31 cm
Sarib Saleh (Raden is a Javanese title), who called himself Raden Saleh Sarif Bastaman when he was in Europe, was born into the noble family of the Regent of Semarang. Endowed with an artistic talent encouraged by his family from his early youth, Saleh was entrusted to the circle of the Governor General in Buitenzorg (Bogor). The government’s landscape painter Antoine A.J. Payen (1797-1853) took the gifted boy under his wing and became his tutor and teacher for five years. In 1829, a stroke of luck provided Raden Saleh with the opportunity to travel to Europe in the company of the colonial civil servant Jean Baptiste De Linge, who offered him passage to the Netherlands in exchange for lessons in Malay and Javanese. Instead of going back to Java with De Linge as planned, Raden Saleh moved to The Hague after his request to complete his education was granted by King William I. In The Hague he became a pupil of the renowned portrait, genre, and history painter Cornelis Kruseman (1797-1857), and of the romantic landscape painter Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870). A diligent student, Raden Saleh naturally adopted Kruseman’s neoclassical academic style. He quickly proved himself to be a skilled portraitist who had mastered the technique of oil painting on canvas and panel by 1832, judging by the dated paintings that have survived. Jean Chrétien Baud (1789-1859), colonial administrator and politician, who became Saleh’s “fatherly tutor,” expressed his satisfaction in 1832, stating that “he had already achieved a greater than average level as a portraitist.” Thanks to introductions to wealthy bourgeois and patrician circles, Saleh was commissioned to paint many portraits, among others portraits of adolescents and young adults. One of them is the portrait of Dirk Cornelis Noordziek, born in The Hague in 1816 to Paulus Mattheus (ca. 1780-1836) and Johanna Geel (1782-1833). An assiduous pupil of the Latijnsche School (Grammar School), he was a classmate of Willem Baud (1816-1879), Jean Chrétien’s eldest son, who probably introduced him to Raden Saleh at the time his father was interim Governor General of the Dutch East Indies (1833-36). Moreover, both were students in Leiden at the same time, a status symbolised by the book Noordziek is holding in his right hand. It should be noted that Saleh also depicted a book in three other portraits of young men who were students in Leiden at about that time. The good-looking Noordziek is represented seated on an upholstered chair in front of a tied-back red drapery. He is smartly dressed like a gentleman following the fashion trends of the time. In the conservative, puritan Dutch society, it was strongly recommended to be properly dressed (deftig; we would now say “posh”). He is wearing a black tailcoat with a black velvet collar and wide dark green lapels, a white shirt enhanced by two black star-shaped buttons, a plain white waistcoat, and black trousers. Also typical of the trendy fashion, a long, narrow black scarf is tied around the raised collar of his shirt, highlighting even more his cheerful face with rosy cheeks and his blond hair. Saleh captured in a masterly way the clear gaze of the grey-eyed sitter who seems to stare at the onlooker. However, the latter does not let himself, or herself, be hypnotised, and is soon distracted by the composition depicted on the right side of the sitter. We can see an opening onto a landscape delimited by the red drapery, part of a column and its base, and a low wall by way of a balustrade. The fictional landscape, depicted under a large cloudy sky at sunset, is crossed by a meandering river and closed by hills and a high mountain. The previously undisclosed charming portrait of the young Dirk Cornelis Noordziek is an illustrative example of the early 19th-century neoclassical portrait painting tradition represented by Raden Saleh’s teacher Cornelis Kruseman. More than twenty years later, the Javanese painter would still adopt this (then-outdated) style of composition when he painted in Batavia (post-1945 Jakarta) the portrait of Elisabeth Boutmy-Ament (1857) that was auctioned in these rooms in 2017. Both portraits show an “imitation” of Kruseman’s composition by Saleh, evident not only in the red curtain but also in the column separating the room from the fictional landscape. The portrait presented is neither signed nor dated. It was very probably painted in 1835 or early 1836. Noordziek embarked for the Dutch East Indies in late spring 1836. In Java, where he married Martina Cornelia MacDonald in 1843, he pursued an honourable career in the colonial administration, climbing the ladder from simple clerk to Resident of the Madiun Residency (East Java), his last assignment at the
€5,000 - €8,000
Provenance: -Collection of Dirk Cornelis Noordziek’s eldest daughter Jeanne Pauline Cornelie Kleijn van Willigen- Noordziek, thence by descent in the family and later gifted from the family to the present owner. The portrait of Dirk Cornelis Noordziek will be included in Marie-Odette Scalliet’s forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of Portraits by Raden Saleh.
Gravestone of Dirk Cornelis Noordziek, in Madiun
50
Raden Sarief Bastaman Saleh (1811-1880), portrait of Elisabeth Sophia Catharina Boutmy-Ament (1830-98), oil on canvas, laid on panel, 57x47 cm (1857), sold at: Auction, Venduehuis, The Hague, 20 September 2017, lot 90 (sold for € 58,000)
Dr Marie-Odette Scalliet
Cornelis Kruseman (1797-1857), portrait of Jan Bondt (1766-1845), oil on canvas, 90x78 cm (1833), Collection Stichting Kunst & Historisch Bezit ABN AMRO, Amsterdam, inv. no. KR00002
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease