Eighteenth-century natural-history illustration in the Dutch East Indies reveals verisimilitude as a goal shared between colonial artists and their counterparts in Europe. Natural-history images more generally exhibit common styles in the world settled and dominated by Europeans. Apparently dramatic differences in the local settings of the artists produced only trivial variations in representing nature pictorially, in just the way that astronomy and physics in the European colonies and spheres of influence departed hardly at all from European practice. The overwhelming strength of disciplinary norms, in science and in art, is the standard explanation for this circumstance. An alternative explanation from social history is proposed. It centers on the hypothesis of a homology between households in colonial settings and in Europe. The alternative explanation implies that both the observatory and the artist's workshop were insensitive to superstructural variation in costume and architecture, as well as variation in climate and cuisine. The hypothesis behind the alternative explanation, designated by the term complementarity, derives directly from the postmodernist dictum that ideas are extrusions of social interactions. Nevertheless, just as the strength of disciplinary norms is unresolved in postmodernist doctrine, so complementarity directly challenges the postmodernist predilection for affirming the distinctiveness of colonial cultures.
...MoreDescription On 18th-century natural-history illustration in the Dutch East Indies.
Book
O'Malley, Therese;
Meyers, Amy R. W.;
(2008)
The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400--1850
(/isis/citation/CBB000830825/)
Article
Pieter van Wingerden;
(2020)
Science on the Edge of Empire: E. a. Forsten (1811–1843) and the Natural History Committee (1820–1850) in the Netherlands Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB848529337/)
Article
Protschky, Susie;
(2008)
Seductive Landscapes: Gender, Race and European Representations of Nature in the Dutch East Indies during the Late Colonial Period
(/isis/citation/CBB001030686/)
Book
Jorink, Eric;
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001201611/)
Book
Quilley, Geoff;
Bonehill, John;
(2004)
William Hodges, 1744--1797: The Art of Exploration
(/isis/citation/CBB000651777/)
Article
Bleichmar, Daniela;
(2006)
Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000631064/)
Chapter
Moon, Suzanne M.;
(2005)
Development and the Dual Economy: Theories of Colonial Transformation in the Netherlands East Indies, c. 1920
(/isis/citation/CBB000774973/)
Book
Oleksijczuk, Denise;
(2011)
The First Panoramas: Visions of British Imperialism
(/isis/citation/CBB001421229/)
Book
Groom, Linda;
(2009)
First Fleet Artist: George Raper's Birds and Plants of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033600/)
Article
Victoria Dickenson;
(2021)
Introduction: Undescrib'd: Taylor White (1701–1772) and His Collections
(/isis/citation/CBB632215005/)
Chapter
Vermij, Rienk;
(2011)
The Light of Nature and the Allegorisation of Science on Dutch Frontispieces around 1700
(/isis/citation/CBB001201619/)
Chapter
Jorink, Eric;
(2011)
Beyond the Lines of Apelles: Johannes Swammerdam, Dutch Scientific Culture and the Representation of Insect Anatomy
(/isis/citation/CBB001201617/)
Book
Attenborough, David;
Owens, Susan;
Clayton, Martin;
Alexandratos, Rea;
(2007)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery
(/isis/citation/CBB000772794/)
Book
Olsen, Penny;
(2008)
A Brush with Birds: Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033757/)
Article
Etheridge, Kay;
(2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian and the Metamorphosis of Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001210122/)
Thesis
Luthfi Adam;
(2020)
Cultivating Power: Buitenzorg Botanic Garden and Empire-Building in the Netherlands East Indies, 1745-1917
(/isis/citation/CBB491950509/)
Article
van de Roemer, Bert;
(2004)
Neat Nature: The Relation Between Nature and Art in a Dutch Cabinet of Curiosities from the Early Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000470280/)
Article
J. A. Edgington;
(2023)
Three botanical watercolours by Richard Bradley (c.1688–1732) including of coffee and cinnamon
(/isis/citation/CBB279891342/)
Article
John A. Edgington;
(2022)
Three botanical watercolours by Richard Bradley (c.1688–1732) including of coffee and cinnamon
(/isis/citation/CBB762625869/)
Book
Tommaso, Lisa Di;
(2012)
Art of the First Fleet: Images of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB001252604/)
Be the first to comment!