The world of Jan Brandes, 1743-1808. Drawings of a Dutch traveller in Batavia, Ceylon and Southern Africa

The exquisite water-colours of Jan Brandes have been one of the best-kept secrets of the history of the Dutch in Asia. They had remained hidden in private collections for almost two centuries, when the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam acquired them in 1985. Soon the oeuvre was recognized as one of the most original and revealing depictions of life in and aroud Dutch VOC establishments in Asia and Africa. Jan Brandes (1743-1808) was appointed Lutheran minister in Batavia, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company in Asia. He produced most of his paintings during the nine years of his travels in Java, Ceylon and Southern Africa, with a purpose not very different from that of taking present-day snapshots. After his return to Europe he settled in Sweden, where he continued to produce water-colours. Brandes' paintings and drawings depict not only the official, well-known side of colonialism, but offer rare view into daily domestic life of a traveller in Asia. They cover a great variety of other subjects ranging from ethnography, topography, genre scenes, to technical topics and details that have not been recorded elsewhere. Jan Brandes produced his drawings primarily as momentoes, for himself or occasionally as a gift for others. This gives his works a very 'private' and documentary character, which begs to be used as a source of information about the past. The oeuvre of Jan Brandes, most of it in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, comprises about six hundred water-colour drawings and sketches. Of these, 198 have been selected here for analysis and are presented in full colour and mostly in their original sizes. The drawings are accompanied by extensive articles by a large number of experts in the many fields covered by Brandes' idiosyncratic and intriguing oeuvre. Max de Bruijn has been employed in various capacities at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and is free lance historian in Jakarta. Remco Raben is historian at the Netherlandish Institute or War Documentation, Amsterdam.