Looking for Dutchman's lost works of art

Looking for Dutchman's lost works of art

Boudewijn Brands, Contributor, Yogyakarta

Over time, a large number of Westerners have produced works of
art in Indonesia. Dutch art collectors Haks and Maris have made
it their life's work to find information about each and every one
of them. This has resulted in the Lexicon of Foreign Artists who
Visualized Indonesia, published by Archipelago Press in 1995 and
covering the period 1600 to 1950.

It contains 303 pages, with seven names to eight names per
page, so about 2,000 artists are identified during this period.
Works of art however, have a tendency to disappear over time.

In Indonesia, the climate is not at all conducive to the
conservation of artwork, especially that on paper. During the
Japanese occupation, the struggle for independence and the
turmoil in 1965, many works of art were damaged or disappeared.
In a number of cases, known from publications, there are no
examples of what they produced, and the lexicon says, "No further
reference."

A case in point is Johannes (Johan) Gabrielse, a Dutch artist
born on Dec. 14, 1881, in Westkapelle on the island of Walcheren
in the Dutch province of Zeeland.

He attended art academy in Amsterdam and worked as a painter,
draughtsman and graphic artist. He got a job with well-known
Dutch educational publisher Wolters, for which he made a number
of posters used for educational purposes. The Wolters Company
sent him on a number of trips in order to produce illustrative
material.

He traveled extensively in Europe for illustrations for
"Europe in words and pictures".

In 1920, he was sent to Indonesia, from where he returned to
the Netherlands in 1921. The resulting posters about Indonesia
were used in schools in the Netherlands until the end of the
1950s, generating knowledge of and interest in Indonesia for a
large number of Dutch. Many became tourists who wanted to see in
real life what he had drawn.

In 1931 Gabrielse's Sketchbook of His Trip to and in Indonesia
was published, containing many of his sketches made there. During
this stay, Johan Gabrielse fell in love with the country and its
people. He managed to get back to Indonesia in 1938 with his wife
and continued to work and travel there.

He proved his skill as a painter with a delicate painting of a
serimpi dancer from the Yogyakarta palace, which is now part of
the collection of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in
Amsterdam.

He also painted several portraits of Javanese royalty, for
example a life-sized portrait of Sri Susuhunan Paku Buwono XI of
Solo, in 1940. When he came to Indonesia, he had with him a
number of paintings made in Europe that he exhibited here with
his locally made work.

Then World War II broke out, followed by the Japanese
occupation. In 1942, Johan Gabrielse, in anticipation of worse to
come, packed up most of his work, paintings and drawings in seven
wooden boxes and left them at Hotel Karangpandan at the place of
the same name near Surakarta.

In 1943, the Japanese caught him and his wife and they were
sent to Ambarawa camp near Semarang. Johan Gabrielse died there
in June 1945 of exhaustion and malaria. His wife survived and
returned to the Netherlands in 1946. She made several attempts to
retrieve the paintings, but to no avail. This was because the
boxes were no longer at Hotel Karangpandan.

Could the Japanese have taken them? After all, some of the
officers were known for their love of fine art and had protected
artists as far as they could, for instance the Hofkers on Bali.

Would this be the end of the story? The answer is no. Sebe
Emmelot, a young Dutchman, is now in Indonesia looking for these
works of art. His grandmother is a daughter of Johan Gabrielse
and he is also an illustrator and painter, just like his great-
grandfather.

Said Sebe: "I know I have only a very small chance of finding
these paintings after all these years, but I'm trying hard for
the honor of my great-grandfather and his work. For this reason I
am asking the readers of this article, if someone should know
anything about this story or anything about the destiny of his
lost paintings, please contact me!"

According to Sebe, one or two boxes contained work produced in
Europe and the remainder were made in Indonesia and have
Indonesia as a subject, including landscapes and portraits. Some
of these portraits are those of Sebe's direct family. They
probably are all signed "Gabrielse". Sebe has promised a reward
to anyone giving information leading to the recovery of the work.

Sebe can be reached by phone on 0817 9418396 or via e-mail at
emmelotsebe@hotmail.com. He is staying in Yogyakarta until June
25, 2003.