Naturalizing Conquest Rural Idylls in Colonial Painting
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chapter three Naturalizing conquest Rural idylls in colonial painting Were a contemporary viewer to rely entirely period, and the resistance they evinced from impression of ‘the tropics’. Panoramic mooi on colonial landscape paintings of the Indies Indonesians. Photography, which became Indië scenes often possess a distinctly pastoral as a source of historical information, they a widespread mode of visual representation quality, promoting rural idylls in which would probably conclude that the Dutch in the Indies almost from its inception in commercial agriculture is almost entirely had little or no impact on the appearance 1839, provides a more complicated, diverse invisible. Views of subsistence farming, or use of Indonesian environments in picture of colonial landscapes. In addition apparently unaffected by the progress of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. to idyllic views of rural scenes, photographs time, provide the only evidence of productive �ough eloquent on some aspects of Dutch portrayed the proto-industrial, highly landscapes. Farmers are typecast as contented colonialism that celebrated improvement regulated, commercial nature of plantation peasants whose lives are exclusively ordered – particularly transinsular highways and environments. by the rhythm of the seasons rather than by botanic gardens, as we saw in the previous Colonial paintings and photographs contracts and industrial time. chapter – paintings were virtually silent thus provided differentiated narratives of �is chapter reveals how mooi Indië on other modi�cations to the Indonesian colonial conquest, with painting emerging painting developed beyond the con�nes of environment that were at the vanguard of as a form that consistently idealized rural, its historic roots in early modern European colonial expansion. �e plantation complex, tropical Indies landscapes devoid of foreign landscape painting to re�ect a peculiarly so crucial to the Netherlands Indies economy, intervention. �is is best observed in the colonial concern with naturalizing Dutch provides the leading example. Landscape popularity and pervasiveness of a genre conquest in Indonesia. �e panoramic paintings proffered no notion of its scale and known as mooi Indië (beautiful Indies). perspectives typical of mooi Indië paintings signi�cance in generating colonial wealth and Scholars have frequently noted the standard elegantly captured the strategic and expanding the frontiers of the colonial state, characteristics of such paintings: their commercial value of colonized land while particulary in the late nineteenth century, style is inevitably naturalist-realist, their conveniently eliding the practical details when these processes accelerated in the Outer content an arrangement of rice �elds, palm of its conquest, which frequently involved Provinces. Paintings also omit the con�ict trees, mountains or smoking volcanoes, all violence, exploitation and destruction of that resulted as the Dutch consolidated and contained within a sweeping, panoramic view the environment. Such conquests did not extended their possessions during the colonial that minimizes details and creates a generic commend the administrators, planters, 73 military men and traders who participated Java War – a convention that will be followed 20 million guilders (Carey 2007:653–4). in and bene�ted from the clearing of land here – while Indonesian histories have tended It took the colonists until 1829 to begin and the reorganization of rural communities to name the war after its tragic hero, Prince regaining control of rebel-occupied territories, to suit colonial production. It was these Diponegoro (1785–1855), who was ultimately and until 1830 for the prince himself to be men, by and large, who wielded the brush or exiled to Sulawesi and died a prisoner of the captured. Indeed, the controversial arrest of pencil that coloured mooi Indië views. Most Dutch (Taylor 2003:234). Diponegoro was Diponegoro became the subject of two of the colonial artists of the nineteenth century a grandchild of Sultan Hamengkubuwono best-known history paintings from the Indies, were amateur enthusiasts whose professional II of Yogyakarta. A strong connection to a genre with few examples in Dutch colonial interests as career colonists pervaded the the countryside fostered through his female art. Both were made by Romantic artists, the ideal painted landscape. War and con�ict relatives, as well as signi�cant associations �rst by the renowned Amsterdam history were avoided in hand-drawn pictures that with santri (pious Muslim) communities in painter, Nicolaas Pieneman (1809–1860), tinted topography with imagination. So south Central Java, determined an unusual and the second by the Javanese artist Raden were landscapes in which the adverse impact upbringing for a prince of his time (Carey Saleh (1811–1880) (Van Tilborgh 1984:182). of colonial modernity – industrialization, 2007:71–102). It was a background that would Pieneman’s picture was commissioned standardization, exploitation (of nature bolster his vision of himself as the messianic by Diponegoro’s nemesis, Lieutenant- and of labour), and coercion – was evident. ratu adil ( Just King) of Javanese folklore, a General H.M. de Kock, and shows the Colonial painters and draftspeople found the belief that assumed special signi�cance during abortive negotiations that culminated with panorama, a style invested with the authority his early adulthood when the Muslim courts the Dutch retracting their promise not to of European tradition, to be a convenient of Central Java were plunged into economic arrest the Prince. Raden Saleh’s painting, tool for minimizing the impact of Dutch and political crisis (Carey 2007:583–91). executed in 1857 and later presented to expansion on Indies landcapes. Diponegoro and his followers justi�ed King Willem III, depicts the same event their designs for usurping the Yogyakarta with a rather more de�ant Diponegoro. Peaceful panoramas: Landscape art and sultanate – personi�ed in the 1820s by Werner Kraus (2005) has argued that Raden myths of colonial non-intervention Hamengkubuwono V and supported by the Saleh’s execution of the scene demonstrates Dutch colonial administration – by labeling the artist’s ‘protonationalist’ inclinations. �e �rst decades of the nineteenth the incumbents as in�dels un�t to rule devout Peter Carey (2007:698) has supported this century represented a crucial period in the Muslim Javanese. interpretation, noting that the presentation expansion of Dutch colonial sovereignty �e rebellion led by Diponegoro in 1825 of the painting to the King was ‘a curious over landscapes formerly assumed by the began a con�agration that would last �ve back-handed gesture’ on the artist’s part. voc and subsequently claimed by the newly- years, involve large parts of Central and However, as argued in the previous chapter, instated Dutch monarchy. An early test of northern coastal Java, devastate a quarter Raden Saleh’s portraits of Dutch governors- the strength of colonial sovereignty presented of all cultivated land, and affect around general consistently portrayed these men itself in Java between 1825 and 1830, when two million Javanese (a third of the total as uncontested rulers over the colonized a bitter war ensued that challenged the population), some 200,000 of whom died. landscapes of Java. �e fact that he presented authority of the infant colonial state. Western �e price of victory for the Dutch, on the his painting of Diponegoro’s arrest to a histories typically refer to the con�ict as the other hand, was 15,000 military deaths and Dutch monarch can thus be interpreted as 74 naturalizing conquest.