Description
Saleh Ben Jaggia, Raden
1811 Samarang (Java) - 1880 Buitenzorg
Last resort.
Signed and dated bottom left: Raden Saleh 1842. Oil on canvas. 154 x 168,5cm.
Frame (194 x 207cm).
Provenance:
-1842 directly from the artist to Adolf H. Schletter
(1793 - 1853);
- in the 20s/30s of the 20th century through succsession until today.
This painting is the largest work by Raden Saleh kown today.
In cooperation with Sascha Tyrra Art Consulting
Expertise: Dr. Werner Kraus, Passau, March 2011
Two sides, opposite to each other and yet both light and friendly, cast their magic spell over my soul. There the paradise of my childhood in the bright sunlight, washed by the Indian Ocean, where my beloved ones live and there the ashes of my ancestors rest. Here Europe's luckiest countries, where the arts, sciences and educational values shine like diamond jewellery, to where the yearning of my youth finally brought me; where I was lucky enough to find friends within the noblest circles, friends who replaced father, mother, brothers and sisters. Between these two worlds my heart is split.
These are the sentences with which the Javanese painter Raden Saleh, whose 200th birthday we are celebrating this year, opens his autobiography, which he handed to his Dresden friends on 25 January 1849. After a happy and artistically successful period, he thus took leave of his 'second home' and prepared for his return to Java. During the past ten years he had established himself as an outstanding oriental painter among the Late Romantic artists in Dresden, achieving social and personal recognition.
After gaining much attention with oriental hunting pictures since 1840, he began to turn towards a new composition scheme in 1842: the relationship between attacking lions, fleeing horse and surprised horseback rider. The central statement of this pictorial arrangement is the superiority of the untamed over the domesticated element, of nature over culture. To intensify the dramatic conflict of this situation, Saleh placed the group inside a dramatic natural setting: gorge, waterfall and oriental flora. He thus confirmed the Late Romantic concept of the oriental other in an exemplary way. The constructed other, the savage, formed a sharp contrast to the protected bourgeois world of the 19th century. The pleasant shiver it sent down the viewer's spine could be calculated and controlled, it was a theatrical fear. With his art, Raden Saleh deliberately fed into social expectations.
The painting presented here represents the climax of this thematic development. In a number of sketches, preliminary drawings and small-sized oil paintings that all struggle to solve the same problem - how to relate lion and horse to one another? - Raden Saleh prepared for his masterstroke. Initially he tried to capture the murderous dynamic of the lion on the attack and the sheer panic of the fleeing horse in drawings. Two extant works which are more than sketches (Ills. 1 and 2) demonstrate that he soon succeeded in his attempt. Since one of the drawings was given to the Queen of Prussia as a present, we may assume that Raden Saleh was satisfied with the result. One reason why he succeeded so quickly may have been that he was able to base his solution regarding the panicky horse on a well-known work by Horace Vernet (Mazeppa, 1826; Ill. 3). Saleh had a special predilection for this French painter, whose dynamic compositions and strong colours impressed him greatly. The horses in the sketches, the large oil painting and the later small oil paintings (one of them was auctioned off at
Christie's Amsterdam on 8.3.2011) not only show the same dynamics but even the same colour of fur as Vernet's Mazeppa horse. This indicates that Raden Saleh by no means tried to hide the fact that he was quoting but rather wanted to emphasise it. It is an endorsement of Vernet's concept of art which, as we know, was in opposition to that of Delacroix. Seen from this perspective, the picture in question is no less than a manifesto of Saleh's concept of art.
History of the painting Last Resort
Last Resort was created in 1842, which was a very productive year for Saleh. The picture drew much attention, and that same year Dresden artist H.F. Grünewald was commissioned to lithograph the painting. He called his lithography The Attack of the Lion after Raden Saleh. In 1843 this sheet was given to all participants in the Tiedge lottery as a present by the Tiedge Foundation in Dresden. The work thus achieved very wide distribution. (The Tiedge Foundation was a charitable foundation to aid impoverished artists). Another reproduction of the painting, a steel engraving, was enclosed in the English periodical Payne's Universum or Pictorial World as a present for early subscribers in 1845. The sheet was announced as follows:
A splendid Premium Plate, engraved in the line manner, of the 'Attack of the Lion' after the picture of his H.R.H. Prince Raden Saleh, measuring 17 inches by 13 inches, printed on sheet imperial paper, and equal in execution to the plates of the art union.
Payne selected the work because he owned an art publishing house in Leipzig, where he had this sheet engraved. Payne's Universum was also marketed in America. As a consequence, this sheet made the artist R. S. known in the States as early as 1845.
The early distribution of the lithographed or engraved version of the painting throughout Europe and North America may explain why several 19th-century reproductions exist in the form of drawings. Some of them were offered as originals by Raden Saleh by the auction house Larasati in Singapore on 12.03.2011, but withdrawn after I clarified the matter.
Even though the painting fascinated contemporary viewers immediately after its completion, it was not sent to any exhibition. The reason seems to have been that it was acquired early on. In a letter to the Dutch Secretary of Colonial Affairs J. C. Baud (written on 17 May 1844 at Callenberg Castle near Coburg) Raden Saleh mentioned that he had sold two paintings to the collector Adolf Heinrich Schletter in Leipzig:
Die Dresden saya soedah bikin djoega gambar darie Djawa orang boeroe sapie oetan (Banteng). Jang kedoeanja satu orang Arab (Bedoeinen) naek koeda satoe singga tangkep sama diea, inie doea gambar die bellie katoean Schletter die Leipzig arga 200 lui d'ore.
In Dresden I painted pictures with Javanese themes: Javanese men on a bull hunt. Another one shows an Arab (a Bedouin) riding on a horse which is attacked by a lion. I sold these two pictures to Mr Schletter in Leipzig, for a price of 200 louis d'or. (Translated from the German translation by Werner Kraus)
(Since one louis d'or weighed 6.7 g and consisted of 22-carat gold, Raden Saleh received 1.34 kilograms of 22-carat gold as compensation for the two pictures, or 0.67 kg for Attack of the Lion - an incredibly high price for a painting in those days.)
Adolf Heinrich Schletter, who owned three pictures by Raden Saleh, was one of the most eminent art collectors in Saxony. In his testament he requested that his 80 pictures become the basic stock of a museum to be built in Leipzig, today's Museum of Fine Arts. When the works were handed over, however, only Bull Hunt was still in the collection. The two other paintings by Saleh, Portrait of a Man and Last Resort, had already been removed. We do not know who owned Last Resort after Schletter. In all likelihood it remained in a German collection.
In short, the history of the painting as outlined above reveals that the Last Resort was recognised as a great and significant work even by the artist's contemporaries. Not only did it earn an unusually high price, it was also graphically reproduced several times. For a while it must have had a solid public presence, and it is difficult to explain why it was later forgotten, only to be found again just now.
The formidable painting shows merely insignificant retouching work and very minor damage to the canvas. It has not been relined. The stretcher bars and the gilded frame are probably originals. The overall condition can be described as excellent.
The painting Last Resort, which was painted in Dresden in 1842,
is without any doubt an original work by Raden Saleh.
Passau, 23 March 2011
Dr Werner Kraus
Director
Centre for Southeast Asian Art
