Lot 146: Jan Brandes 1743 - 1808 , Sheltering from the Storm Watercolor on paper

Watercolor on paper

measurements 7 7/8 by 12 5/8 in. alternate measurements 200 by 321 mm

(Sale: Sotheby's, London, May 2 & 3, 1985, lot 216)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Jan Brandes was a Lutheran minister with a great talent for watercolors. He was appointed to serve in Batavia (now Jakarta), the capital of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia. He stayed for six years, ending in 1784, where he drew genre scenes, topographical and ethnographic studies and technical drawings which are now recognized as a valuable record of colonial life in the late eighteenth century. After he left Indonesia, Brandes traveled to Ceylon and then Southern Africa, staying in other Dutch colonial outposts and recording his observations. By 1787, he had settled in Sweden, where he continued to paint watercolors. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds most of his known output of about 600 works.