by Werner Kraus

An artist’s work must be viewed in the context of his or her time and intellectual environment. The book attempts to describe Raden Saleh’s life against the historical background of his era. The Javanese world from which he came is portrayed, as are the various European circumstances in which he found himself between 1829 and 1850 and the social and cultural reality of the even stronger colonial state into which Raden Saleh had to integrate himself upon his return from Europe. The book is not intended to be a hermetically sealed textbook but wishes to tell the stories of his life and his works in an informal collection of essays. Illustrations and pictures are selected in much the same way: no attempt has been made to present an exhaustive list of Saleh’s works, nor to achieve any other form of completeness. Ultimately, however, this is a book which invokes the work and life of Raden Saleh like no other publication before.