Raden Saleh (circa 1811-1880) was still a teenager when he was separated from his family in Terboyo, Semarang, in early 1829 as the Java War (1825-30) entered its final year. Colonial officials, including the German missionary, JFC Gericke (1798-1857), had early on discerned the young Sarib Saleh’s artistic talent. Trained by the Belgian painter-architect, AAJ Payen (1792-1853), in Bogor and West Java in the early to mid 1820s, he was chosen to accompany the Belgian Director of Finances, Jean-Baptiste de Linge, on the lengthy 10,000 nautical mile journey to the Netherlands, a country he had only heard about through the stories told him by his family in Terboyo and educated Javanese. In Europe, first the Netherlands, then Dresden (Germany) and finally Paris, Saleh mixed with leading European artists and developed his own unique artistic genius. He showed that he could paint not only the lush landsca...
]]>This mammoth volume (751 pages) goes far beyond the Indonesian Revolution itself in its wide-ranging history of modern Indonesia. Only in the last chapters does it really explore its title: how Indonesia and its revolution gave birth to the modern world. It devo...
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