View of Batavia

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved, yet severely damaged. Cusping is visible on all sides, though less so at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, thick, off-white ground extends over the tacking edges. It is covered by a thin, transparent, oily layer, possibly an imprimatura, containing some black and earth pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges at the bottom and on the left and right, and over the top edge. The composition was built up in a fairly straightforward manner in only one or two layers from the back to the front. The sky was applied in one layer containing what appears to be lead white, glassy transparent bluish pigment particles and a black pigment. The bare earth was executed wet in wet in two layers of ochre-coloured, coarse white pigment particles and a black pigment. A sketchy first lay-in of the architecture was done with fine grey brushstrokes, and the palm trees with transparent brownish paint. The latter is visible along the trunks in areas where the initial lay-in was not precisely followed. In several places contours were altered and covered with the paint of the sky, for example around the tree canopy and along the ridge of the roof on the far right. Highlights and details such as patterns in the clothing were added rather roughly in the final stage.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2022

Poor. There are disturbing dark craquelures and many areas of paint loss, both large and small. The signature was placed over the cracks and is intact, while the surrounding area is badly damaged. What is apparently a tear in the canvas above the two palm trees on the right, running some 35 cm to the right, has been filled and retouched. There are numerous discoloured retouchings and overpaints, especially in the sky. The varnish has yellowed and has an uneven gloss.

From the artist, with one other painting, fl. 120, to the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch East India Company, 1662;¹¹NATH, VOC Archive, acc. no. 1.04.02, inv. no. 4583, Samenvattende staten 1642-1678, 30 April 1662. The second work is lost. It may have been intended for one of the other chambers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), for example Zeeland, which possessed many similar paintings. recorded in East India House, Hoogstraat, Amsterdam, 1663;²²O. Dapper, Historische beschryving der stadt Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1663, p. 449: ‘In de zael daer de Bewinthebbers vergaderen, en van hunnen handel raadslagen, hangen te pronk Chineesche en Japonsche schilderyen. Daer hangt ook de groote stadt Batavien, met haer schrickelijk en onwinnelijk kasteel’. recorded in East India House, 1771;³³The painting can be seen hanging above the fireplace in the conference room in Simon Fokke’s 1771 Stadholder Willem V Taking the Chair as the Senior Director of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company, 1 June 1768, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-00-1623. ? removed from East India House, 1831;⁴⁴East India House was used by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and the Colonies up until 1831 after the dissolution of the VOC in 1797. There is no documentary evidence that the canvas was removed when the ministry relocated, as assumed in E.H. Mattie and C. van Soestbergen, ‘Het Oost Indisch Huis te Amsterdam: Problemen bij de reconstructie van een historisch interieur’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 100 (2001), pp. 93-99, esp. p. 99, note 15. The painting and those surrounding it may have been transferred to the Department of Water Management, National Industry and Colonies in The Hague in 1831 (note RMA).…; from W.J.M. Engelberts, fl. 50, to the museum, 1859⁵⁵NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 38, p. 206 (11 August 1859).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-19

Four rows of towering coconut palms dominate this unique view of Batavia. In the foreground is the busy marketplace bordered by the Kali Besar river on the right. In the background on the other side is the castle erected by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). A group of officials on horseback has just left and crossed the drawbridge. The white building on the far right is the company’s main storehouse, and in front of it is the headquarters of the Council of Justice. Next to the river is a small shipyard. Andries Beeckman omitted some of the architecture and depicted the Kali Besar considerably smaller than it was in reality in order to provide a better sight of the castle.

The painting’s main point of interest is the portrayal of foreign people and costumes, the models for which can be found in Beeckman’s albums of watercolours (fig. a, fig. b). They give an excellent impression of the various inhabitants of Batavia at the time. Two Chinese merchants are arguing in the left foreground. Behind them, under the overhanging roof, two Javanese farmers are threshing rice as a Chinese artisan approaches. On the corner of the main building the artist drew the sketchy outlines of a tame cockatoo sitting on a perch. Between the first and second row of trees a group of Javanese are playing sepak raga, a form of soccer, watched by a crowd of Dutchmen and natives.¹¹¹¹The purpose of the game was to keep the ball in the air as long as possible; see F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L2. One of the bare-chested men in the centre has just kicked the ball, which is hovering high above in the air. A well-dressed Dutch official and his Indonesian wife are strolling in the centre foreground, escorted by a boy holding a pajong over their heads. Figures from various nations can be distinguished between the palms behind them, such as a Bengali dressed in white and a Sulawesian warrior.

Further to the right in the foreground, identified by his striped clothes, is a Mardijker, a formerly enslaved Asian man who had converted to Christianity after his liberation (from the Malaysian merdeka, meaning ‘free’). Behind him two female fruit sellers have their goods spread out on the ground. In the distance, near a little hut, a Dutchman has joined some Chinese, possibly for a game of dice. The actual marketplace is between the last row of trees and the river. In the foreground a Chinese with a knife in his mouth is showing a chunk of fish to a Mardijker. To his left is a Japanese man in a blue kimono who is wearing a hat to signify his conversion to Christianity. Behind them other figures are bringing baskets with merchandise to the market. Two boats are transporting people and goods to and from the other areas of town.

Apart from these easily recognizable elements, there are many less conspicuous exotic details. The most remarkable are the camel on the far side of the river, the brush-tailed animal and the Javanese man climbing the coconut palms, and another one precariously balancing on the planks which connect the treetops. Despite the sometimes sketchy and rather clumsy execution, the artist does provide the viewer with a comprehensive impression of seventeenth-century Batavia.

In 1662 the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC paid Beeckman 120 guilders for two pictures, one of which must have been this View of Batavia.¹²¹²See Provenance. The document was rediscovered in K. Zandvliet, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries, Amsterdam 1998, p. 295, note 35. In 1663 it hung in East India House in Amsterdam’s Hoogstraat, and is mentioned in Olfert Dapper’s description of the city of that year: ‘Chinese and Japanese paintings hang on display in the hall where the governors meet and discuss their trade. Hanging there too is the large city of Batavia with its terrifying and invincible castle’.¹³¹³See Provenance. More than a century later Beeckman’s View of Batavia was still the showpiece of the building, as can be gauged from a 1771 drawing by Simon Fokke,¹⁴¹⁴Rijksmuseum, RP-T-00-1623. which shows it mounted above the fireplace in the conference room of the Lords XVII, surrounded by lesser scenes of other Asian towns.

Beeckman’s material was eagerly copied. His figures, including those in the Rijksmuseum picture, recur in several seventeenth-century travelogues and books on Asia.¹⁵¹⁵Such as the manuscript journals of the German travellers Jörg Franz Müller (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek) and Caspar Schmallkalden (Gotha, Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek), and illustrated books like Philippus Baldeaus, Naauwkeurige Beschryvinge van Malabar en Choromandel, Amsterdam 1672, and Johan Nieuhof, Gedenkwaerdige Zee en Lantreise door de voornaemste Landschappen van West en Oostindien, Amsterdam 1682. As early as 1688 the Saxon Elector Johan George III asked the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC for permission to have the present work replicated.¹⁶¹⁶ P.A. Leupe (pseud. Laboranter), ‘Schilderijen behoorende aan de oost-indische compagnie’, De Navorscher 14 (1864), p. 211; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, p. 65. That very probably resulted in the View of Batavia signed ‘J.F.F.’ now in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.¹⁷¹⁷Oil on canvas, 144 x 209 cm, inscribed on the boat on the right ‘De marckt van Batavia’ (The market at Batavia). It was given to the Royal Tropical Institute by J.G. Cremer, who had purchased it in Leipzig; see F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L3; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, p. 65, note 3. According to De Haan that second version was by Beeckman as well and represented the return of the Dutch captain Arnoud de Vlamingh to Batavia on 14 August 1656 after his victory in the Ambonese war.¹⁸¹⁸See F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L3. In his opinion De Vlamingh probably commissioned it and had himself depicted in the foreground, as the Dutchman with his Indonesian wife. The Rijksmuseum canvas, De Haan believed, was also ordered by De Vlamingh and was thus incorrectly dated around 1662. Although Beeckman must have made his preparatory drawings some time between early 1653 and early 1657, the period he presumably spent in the Indies, neither painting predates December 1658, when he was back in Amsterdam. While the Rijksmuseum picture was paid for in April 1662, and was thus most likely executed around then, the one in the Tropenmuseum has to be dated much later, presumably in or around 1688. It cannot be attributed to Beeckman on stylistic grounds, and there is no reason to doubt the signature ‘J.F.F.’. As some of the figures do correspond with those in the present canvas, the copyist either used another View of Batavia by Beeckman as his model or had original drawings by the artist at his disposal. Much later works that were clearly inspired by Beeckman’s painting are the 1864 View of Batavia by Contadyn Cunaeus, which was in the former Museum Nusantara in Delft,¹⁹¹⁹J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, p. 66, note 1; M.-O. Scalliet, ‘Twee eeuwen Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: Europese schilders in Oost-Indië in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, in K. van Brakel et al., Indië omlijst: Vier eeuwen schilderkunst in Nederlands-Indië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Tropenmuseum) 1998-99, pp. 13-38, esp. p. 26, note 17. and a copy in the Nasional Museum in Jakarta.²⁰²⁰Illustrated in F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L2. According to De Loos-Haaxman the copy is from the twentieth century and was kept in the Museum of the Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap until its dissolution; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, p. 65, note 1. The RKD has an old black-and-white photograph of a painting, the whereabouts of which are unknown, which is an impressionistic adaptation of Beeckman’s picture.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L2; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, pp. 64-66; M.-O. Scalliet, ‘Twee eeuwen Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: Europese schilders in Oost-Indië in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, in K. van Brakel et al., Indië omlijst: Vier eeuwen schilderkunst in Nederlands-Indië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Tropenmuseum) 1998-99, pp. 13-38, esp. pp. 25-28; K. Zandvliet, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries, Amsterdam 1998, pp. 224-26; E.M. Jacobs, ‘Beeckman’s Batavia’, in S. de Meer et al. (eds.), Schatkamer: Veertien opstellen over maritiem-historische onderwerpen aangeboden aan Leo M. Akveld bij zijn afscheid van het Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, Franeker 2002, pp. 102-13; N. Bergervoet, ‘Wat de Chinezen en Japanners ons vertellen’, in M. Jonker, E. de Groot and C. de Hart (eds.), Van velerlei pluimage: Zeventiende-eeuwse waterverftekeningen van Andries Beeckman, Nijmegen 2014, pp. 51-58, esp. p. 54; E. de Groot, ‘Tussen Batavia en Amsterdam’, in ibid., pp. 9-26, esp. p. 9; T. Mostert and J. van Campen, Silk Thread: China and the Netherlands from 1600, Nijmegen 2015, pp. 129, 131

1880, pp. 40-41, no. 16; 1887, p. 10, no. 69 (16); 1903, p. 42, no. 445; 1934, p. 42, no. 445; 1960, p. 33, no. 445; 1976, p. 105, no. A 19

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Andries Beeckman, View of Batavia, c. 1662', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5949