Trade and collectors

The Dutch government’s current policy on colonial provenance focuses on redressing injustices involving objects that came into state possession through colonial hierarchical relationships. Historically, relations between the Dutch and various Asian nations and territories varied greatly in nature, ranging from trade contacts with Japan and China to the occupation of parts of Sri Lanka and Indonesia. In the following we provide more information about this variegated landscape of contact points, and the objects that circulated within it.

Luxury Goods

Finely crafted household objects from Asia – made from distinctive and sometimes precious materials such as porcelain, ivory and mother-of-pearl – were highly prized in Europe. From the 16th century, Portuguese ships provided a direct sea route to transport such objects. Trade in items produced specifically for the international market increased in the 17th century, when ships from the Netherlands and other countries started sailing to Asia. For the Dutch, this trade formed part of the colonial system that the VOC (Dutch East India Company) established over the course of several centuries from its headquarters in Indonesia.

Artworks

Finely crafted household objects from Asia – made from distinctive and sometimes precious materials such as porcelain, ivory and mother-of-pearl – were highly prized in Europe. From the 16th century, Portuguese ships provided a direct sea route to transport such objects. Trade in items produced specifically for the European market increased in the 17th century, when ships from the Netherlands and other countries started sailing to Asia. For the Dutch, this trade formed part of the colonial system that the VOC (Dutch East India Company) established over the course of several centuries from its headquarters in Indonesia.

The Dutch in Asia

When the first Dutch traders arrived in Asia at the end of the 16th century, they encountered trading networks that had already existed for centuries. Their ambition was to participate in – and profit from – these Asian trade connections. The VOC-affiliated merchants were looking for goods for the Dutch market. Besides spices, they traded luxury items such as porcelain, silk and lacquerware. In some cases the VOC had to comply with local conditions, while in others it aggressively enforced trade. On the island of Banda, for example, the VOC used force to secure a monopoly on nutmeg production. Dutch merchants wanting to trade Chinese goods, on the other hand, had to wait in ports outside China for whatever was offered for sale by Chinese ships.

Intensification

Trade intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries. Alongside the business in more basic goods such as porcelain tableware and textiles, there was a market for exclusive items from the colonies, such as Indian chintz fabrics featuring family crests, and ivory boxes from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). Few tangible traces have survived that bear witness to the circumstances in which these artisanal objects were produced and traded, but we do know that in the Dutch colonies there was significant inequality between European traders and the local population.

By way of exception, one example for which we do have documentation is the group of objects sold by the Chinese merchant Wang Jialu in the 1770s, through VOC merchants in Canton, to the collector Jean Theodore Royer in The Hague. One of the objects was a porcelain pagoda, a tower more than a metre in height.

In Jakarta and Sri Lanka

Before sailing on to their ultimate destination, most VOC officials would stop off briefly at a trading post in Asia. When wealthy families did settle for longer periods, they furnished their homes with beautifully decorated furniture and household objects. This phenomenon was particularly evident in Jakarta (then Batavia) and in Sri Lanka, where they acquired household goods and other items from highly skilled local artisans. In Sri Lanka, the VOC had established a monopoly on the cinnamon trade by force. The wealth this generated for VOC personnel meant they could surround themselves with richly decorated objects, such as an ivory case for a long pipe. Silver objects and furniture from Sri Lanka and Java became collector’s items from the 18th century in Britain and the 19th century in the rest of Europe. After being shipped from Asia to Europe they entered the international art market.

New perspective

European interest in Asian luxury goods – particularly those of ancient origin – persisted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. While previously imported goods circulated, others continued to arrive from Asia. In this period, European collectors identified an additional category: art objects that were considered important as artistic or devotional items in Asia itself. In the colony of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), interest was growing in Javanese Hindu-Buddhist sculpture. Increased land activity – for construction and agriculture – led to the uncovering of ancient stone and metal objects, and many of these archaeological items were collected by colonial officials. They included a silver figure of the Buddhist deity Vajrasattva.

International art market

Japan opened more of its ports to foreigners in 1854, and besides encountering Japanese calligraphy, painting and sculpture for the first time, visitors to the country were introduced to Chinese art, which had long been collected in Japan. This, at least for Europeans, ‘newly discovered’ art – originating initially mainly from China and Japan, but later also from the Himalayas, India and Southeast Asia – was quickly embraced by the international art market.

Large numbers of religious sculptures were removed from their original context in this period. In Japan, for example, where Buddhism experienced a difficult period in the late 19th century, many temples were forced to sell part of their collections. After first entering a Japanese artist’s collection, a Buddhist statue was later sold to the Netherlands in 1960, through a dealer in Tokyo.

The 20th Century

Trade in art expanded at the beginning of the 20th century. In China, this market was impacted by political instability and the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), a turbulent period when many artworks and cultural objects left mainland China and arrived in the West and Japan via multiple channels. It was as part of this dynamic that a large wooden statue of Guanyin came to be sold by a Chinese dealer to Germany at the end of the 1920s. Later, in 1939, it came into Dutch hands.

The colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies oversaw the restoration of old temples in the region. Most statues were left in place, but a number were removed to Jakarta, where they entered the collection of a newly established museum. Local communities had no voice in this process: it was the Archaeological Service (Oudheidkundige Dienst), a Dutch colonial authority, that determined the destination of these art objects. This led to some important collections being shipped off to the Netherlands.

Knowledge and appreciation of Asian art

Since its founding in 1918, the Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands (KVVAK) has sought to foster knowledge and appreciation of Asian art. In 1930, a delegation from the Society embarked on a trip through Asia to purchase works of art. While in Japan, they acquired various Chinese and Japanese objects through art dealers. In Indonesia the Society received several sculptures on loan and as gifts from the colonial administration, including a lintel featuring a monster head from the Candi Sewu temple complex. And in Cambodia, the French colonial administration gave permission for the delegation to purchase four statues, including a fragment depicting a four-faced head from the major Buddhist temple Ta Prohm in Angkor.

The Rijksmuseum and provenance research

The Society’s collection has been housed by the Rijksmuseum since 1952. Over the subsequent years, the KVVAK and the museum have further expanded this collection through acquisitions on both the international and domestic art markets. In the mid-1990s, the museum began its programme of research into the provenance of these objects. More recently, this research has also focused on the circumstances under which the objects left their countries of origin and entered the art market. The provenance of several sculptures has been established and published.