Raden Saleh's legacy lives on in German town

Raden Saleh's legacy lives on in German town

Christina Schott, Contributor, Dresden, Germany

Raden Saleh Syarief Bustaman, the grandfather of modern
Indonesian art, was among the first Javanese ever educated in
Europe in the 19th century.

Every city in Indonesia has a street named after him, every
Indonesian knows his name, although it's often not more than
that. He is commonly known as a "prince" (not true, in fact) who
was sent to the Netherlands to study the European style of
painting. But who knows that he actually spent as much as time in
Germany and France, including more than four years out of that in
Dresden and its surroundings.

A few Indonesians in the know do find their way to the remote
village of Maxen, an hour's drive from Dresden, where the local
museum is currently holding the first exhibition about the period
Raden Saleh spent in Saxony. There are also German visitors who
have never heard about the Javanese painter who lived in Germany
from 1839 to 1845.

"Raden Saleh should be paid much greater honor with grand
exhibitions in the big museums of Dresden, Dusseldorf or Berlin,
but somehow nobody dares to come up with it," said Jutta Tronicke
said, who came up with the concept of the exhibition which runs
until October 2004.

For a Javanese of today, Maxen (population 600) might seem to
be a little like the end of the world. The village, located in
the middle of nowhere close to Swiss Saxony, is little touched by
the changes of time.

The old knight's estate, first mentioned in the 14th century,
was owned by Major Friedrich Anton Serre and his wife Friederike
at the time Raden Saleh reached Dresden, on the run from his
colonial masters in the Netherlands.

Thanks to the lively spirit of the Serres, Maxen became a
meeting point for the international artist scene frequenting the
salons of Dresden, including composers Robert Schumann and Franz
Liszt, poet Ludwig Tieck and Danish writer Hans-Christian
Andersen.

The most exotic member, though, was most probably the painter
from Java.

The story was fascinating enough to stir the curiosity of two
women living in Maxen today: Gisela Niggemann-Simon, who helped
build up the little town museum, and Tronicke, a retired
journalist from Dresden.

Although there was neither enough space nor the funding to get
any original painting of Raden Saleh for the exhibition at the
tiny 40-square-meter-museum, the two women used much care and
passion to create an interesting and surprising documentation of
Raden Saleh's Saxony sojourn, with many little known pictures,
letters and accessories of and about the painter.

Both of them have never visited Indonesia, nor studied art or
art history. They simply developed their own private interest in
the Javanese painter through his association with the town.

Eventually, they were supported by several institutions and
professionals -- among them, Werner Kraus, professor of Southeast
Asian sciences at the University of Passau, and the Indonesian
Embassy in Berlin.

The exhibition presents the story behind the well-known hero
of Indonesian arts, but it is the inclusion of the little details
that make this documentation so remarkable -- details that even
students at Indonesian arts academies never learn.

Raden Saleh had spent 10 years in The Hague before he came to
Saxony. It was in the Dutch city that the Javanese scholar took
on the style of the European dandy, including keeping an open
bills at his tailor, doctor and the bookstore.

When he started having affairs with local women, the colonial
government decided to send the inconvenient guest on a final trip
through Europe, before putting him back on a ship to his home
country.

But the talented painter was not interested yet in returning
to Java, finding the free artist's life to his liking. And since
his stylized war and hunting scenes fulfilled the desires of the
late Romantic period, he did not need to depend on a Dutch
stipend to support him.

After journeying through Dusseldorf and Berlin, the artist
came to Dresden, where he quickly entered the artistic salons and
noble circles around the king of Saxony, with his exotic pedigree
helping smoothen his way.

He personally and his art conformed to the European stereotype
of the mysterious "orient" -- encompassing everything between
Northern Africa and the Far East -- and he duly obliged by
painting huge, fantastic scenes, including the famous image of a
horse attacked by two lions and a snake.

"Europeans find it hard to present fights and battles, because
their nature is another one. Therefore it is my luck to be an
Asian," Raden Saleh wrote in a letter to the Dutch colonial
government in 1841.

Gisela Niggemann-Simon, who organized the exhibition, comments
on this with a smile. "His animal fights and sea storms served
the taste of his public: That's how people imagined the wild
orient at that time. Nobody was interested that Javanese knew
lions in nature as few as Germans do," she said, referring to the
fact that tigers still roamed the island of Java at that time.

During his stay in Dresden, Raden Saleh found his style that
he later developed at Horace Vernet in Paris -- and the necessary
items to intensify it. He made many studies at the stables and
the zoo as well as in the royal museum and armory, where he could
spend as much time as he wanted. He loved the landscape around
Dresden, like the unique sandstone formations in the river Elbe
valley.

But the real reason the Javanese stayed such a long time in
Saxony was probably due to the friends and teachers who provided
an enduring influence on his life, especially the Serres.

It is clear in the heartfelt message the painter wrote in the
family Bible of his hosts before he left Maxen: "This as a memory
for Major Serre and his wife, whom I love and respect like my
second parents."

Raden Saleh is believed to have left many portraits and
landscape paintings at the Serres' summer residence at Maxen, but
most are lost or in private collections.

In 1844, Raden Saleh finally gave in and left Dresden on the
orders of the Dutch government -- although he did not go directly
to Paris, but spent another year in Coburg.

Even from Paris, he returned several times to Dresden and
Maxen to see his friends, the last time in 1848 when Major Serre
built a "Javanese pavilion" in the middle of his vineyards to
honor his friend.

Three years later, Raden Saleh returned to Java, but he was
never to enjoy the life he had known abroad. As a native who had
adapted to European lifestyle, he had become a threat to the
colonial lords at Java.

He was also too far ahead of his times in trying to realize
the concept of intercultural exchange and friendship, which he
described in the family book of Serres' housekeeper Miss
Margaret: "Stay as you are! Go on in your life path to honor God
and be in love with the people! Be a Christian or Muslim, all of
us will appear in front of God's throne."

I-box:

The exhibition is open every Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m.
to 6 p.m. at Heimatmuseum Maxen, Maxener Str. 71, 01809 Maxen,
M|glitztal, Germany Phone: +49-35206-31056 (Dr. Gisela Niggemann-
Simon)

The well researched and informative catalog Raden Saleh -- Ein
Malerleben zwischen zwei Welten (A painter's life between two
worlds) published by Niggemann & Simon Verlag, Maxen, was written
by Dr. Werner Kraus with a foreword by Prof. Hans Joachim
Neidhardt.