Notes
The appearance on the market of a canvas by Raden Saleh is an event for which both private collectors and specialists await with the same impatience and curiosity. All the secrets of the artistic heritage of a painter whose notoriety do not cease increasing with the passing of years, are far from being entirely revealed. Thus the (re)discovery of a painting, the existence of which was until now only suspected, rekindles the adventure.
The painter Raden Saleh is a phenomenon relating to art history as a whole, and to nineteenth-century Indonesian history, where he has no equal. Raden Saleh was the first Javanese to have followed his artistic calling in Europe and to paint in the Western style, whereby he equalled if not exceeded the work of his teachers. Thus, he is rightly considered the precursor - or pioneer - of modern pictorial art in Indonesia ("perintis seni lukis di Indonesia"). Although the biography of Raden Saleh still contains many gaps, the major events of his life, his voyages and his decisive meetings, are well documented. The story of his life has turned him into an almost legendary painter ("pelukis legendaris"), as succinctly stated by Supartono Widyosiswoyo (Sejarah seni rupa Indonesia, Jakarta, 2002).
Raden Saleh is not the only Javanese young aristocrat to have been entrusted to Europeans in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but his exceptional artistic gift sealed his fate, and ultimately his fame. From the surviving correspondence, one can conclude that Raden Saleh, the cousin of the Regent of Semarang, came to Buitenzorg (Bogor) sometime between the end of 1819 and mid-1820. The government landscape painter Antoine Payen (1792-1853) took him under his wing and when Payen moved to Bandung in 1822, he took his pupil with him. In Bandung, and during several journeys through Java, Raden Saleh remained under Payen's tutelage until the latter's return to Europe in 1826. Introduced by Payen to the art of oil painting, Raden Saleh dreamed of becoming a painter in Europe and saw his wish fulfilled in 1829. Granted protection by the Dutch government, he settled in The Hague where he lived permanently until 1839. He became the student of Cornelis Kruseman and Andreas Schelfhout in the years 1830-1833. Pushed by the unceasing drive to become an accomplished painter, he continued his studies and pursued his chosen calling. The presence of the famous wild animal tamer Henri Martin and of his "Menagerie", including in particular a tiger and lions, in The Hague in 1836-1837 had a decisive influence on the young painter. By painting scenes of wild and ferocious animals, he exploited a genre unknown to his Dutch colleagues and which raised him to the rank of the great orientalist painters such as Horace Vernet (his future master in Paris from 1845 on) and Delacroix. From 1838 on, Raden Saleh primarily depicts lions in his "orientalistic" paintings and it is important to note that he introduced tigers into his compositions from 1846 on. In this regard, one should keep in mind the spectacular painting known as the "Deer Hunt", in which one of the horses is being attacked by a tiger, executed in Paris in 1846 (Christie's Singapore, 31 March 1996: Lot 52).
In 1839, Raden Saleh left The Hague for what his Dutch patrons intended as an "educational tour" to Germany (Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Berlin, Dresden...) and Paris. As things turned out, it was not just a "tour" - it lasted for more than ten years - and "educational" must be understood in the widest sense of the word. He indeed travelled extensively (even to Switzerland, England and Scotland). The many years he spent in Dresden and Coburg and Paris were the most stimulating and enriching for both the man and the artist. Especially his life long friendship with Ernest II (1818-1893, who succeeded his father in 1844), Grand Duke of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha, shows how much the personality and the qualities of this highly educated and distinguished Javanese aristocrat were recognized and admired elsewhere in Europe, far away from the conformist and conservative society of The Hague with its colonial prejudices. It is of course impossible to name all the members of high society and of the various European courts, as well as the prominent intellectuals and artists, whom Raden Saleh met and was received by. The artist himself, of course, stands in the foreground and as a painter he was very much in demand (also as a portraitist, an aspect which is not discussed here). Of course, it cannot be denied that he produced major works after 1850, but one is struck by the versatility, quality and quantity of his production in the years 1840-1850, not to speak of the grandeur of his biggest canvases. The ambitious artist, gifted with an insatiable greed for knowledge, had reached his full maturity. It is also no coincidence that the present lot, a spectacular, yet far from innocent "inhabited" Javanese landscape sublimated by the majestic Borobudur in the background, disturbed by the threatening presence of two tigers, was executed in 1849. There is evidence that Raden Saleh spent that year partly in Germany, partly in Paris. Wherever it was finished is of no importance, but there is a very strong presumption that this very "landscape" entered the collections of the Grand Duke of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha. When the International Colonial Exhibition was held in Amsterdam in 1883, three years after Raden Saleh's death in Bogor, no fewer than nineteen paintings by him were shown, four of them having been loaned by the "Duke of Saxony-Coburg". Of these four, one is described as "An Oriental landscape, [and] two tigers on the foreground" ("Een Oostersch landschap en twee tijgers op de voorgrond"). Since there is only one other known landscape, evidently not a hunting scene, "visited" by one tiger ("Harimau minum", 1863, Museum Istana Kepresidenan, Jakarta), it is very tempting to conclude that the present lot was acquired by Ernest II of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha.
While looking at this composition, bathed in the reddish and golden twilight whose extreme dramatic tension is reflected by the opposition between the two parts of the canvas whose limit is indicated by two palm trees underlined by the silhouette of a volcano in the distance, one believes to hear the painter whisper: "I had a vision". The painting echoes the timeless dreamlike vision of an illusory reality, heavy with paradoxical symbols like shadow and light, innocence and danger, man and animal, divine spirituality and human materialism. Rendered with the meticulousness and the concern for detail which characterizes the impeccable technique of Raden Saleh, this representation is conceived in the tradition of the historical landscape typical to the neo-classical and romantic painters who taught and inspired him. The paradox of a Javanese born painter, who had left his country twenty years ago when he re-created an idealized landscape situated on an island "where men and tigers are neighbours". The Borobudur in the distance, above which the disc of the sun seems suspended, appears like a symbolic shelter to the family whose peaceful progression is stopped by an obstacle, behind which two tigers are lurking. In fact, all the attention of the spectator is absorbed by the two tigers who symbolize at the same time death and vital energy. While choosing to place them in the foreground, the painter demonstrates not only the talent of which Horace Vernet said that it was "brilliant and energetic" ("genial dan energique" [sic], Raden Saleh quoting Vernet in a letter in Malay to a sobat (friend), Paris, 3 November 1847, in the National Archives, The Hague), but also his fascination for the King of the jungle (forest) gifted with supernatural forces. Whatever the interpretations of this composition, it remains the most intriguing painting Raden Saleh executed while in Europe, and one should keep in mind that when he created it, he had already made serious plans to travel to Java. Raden Saleh was getting homesick and he also wanted to follow Vernet's advice to "spend two to four years in Java in order to make studies after nature and to refresh his inspiration". The man might have been inspired unconsciously by a "vision" or a dream, while the artist possessed the skills to express it on a canvas. Knowing that the Dutch (colonial) authorities he was always depending of were not very keen on seeing him leave Europe, one can easily conclude that the journey he dreamed of was not an easy one to realize and that he had to surmount many obstacles. Raden Saleh had to wait until the end of 1851 before he could embark for Java.
The present lot is intriguing for a completely different reason as well. Another painting (another canvas), depicting (almost) exactly the same motif, appeared on the market in 1999. Since experts and analyses confirm, however, that the authenticity of the present lot is beyond doubt, it cannot be excluded that Raden Saleh painted the same composition twice, one being commissioned by the Duke of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha, another being acquired by an unknown person. This hypothesis is reasonable when one bears in mind that Raden Saleh painted the above mentioned "Deer Hunt" (1846) twice, one for the king of the Netherlands (sent by Raden Saleh in December 1846 from Paris, the reception of the painting was confirmed by the Dutch Minister of Colonies in February 1847), and another for someone whose name is not revealed. In his correspondence, Raden Saleh mentions obviously both paintings, that is two canvases depicting the same "Deer hunt" with a tiger. He is also known to have painted at least two identical versions of both the "Eruption of the Merapi by day" and the "Eruption of the Merapi by night" in 1865 and 1866.
