Title:Woest Landschap: oosthoek van Java.

This print is part of a extremely rare complete set of 24 antique lithographs, to view the full set, CLICK HERE.

One of the highlights of our collection is this extremely rare set of 24 hand-finished chromolithographs depicting landscapes and scenes on Java Island. The full set is considered to be superior in terms of lithographic quality, artistic merit and scientific accuracy. Only a few sets are known to be complete, mostly in collections of libraries and institutions such as the National Gallery in Singapore, the Dutch national museum and the Library of Australia.

The lithographs are made after paintings and drawings by Abraham Sa lm, a self-taught artist, who came to Indonesia in 1843, settled in Surabaya as a merchant and later owned a tobacco plantation, in Malang. The plantation was so successful that he left the running of it to his two oldest sons and spent most of his time painting.

Abraham Salm was born in 1801 in Amsterdam, where he spent the first three decades of his life. During this time Salm worked as a merchant, but he was also a collector of art and a painter. For his paintings, Salm received positive recognition, given the fact he became a member of the Royal Academy of Art in Amsterdam in 1833 and his work was allowed to be presented at the exhibitions of the artist’s society ‘Levende Meesters’.

This society was a Dutch group of contemporary painters and can in a way be compared to the French Salon of that time. In 1837 Salm left the Netherlands and moved to the Dutch East Indies where he spent a big part of his life on Java working as a tobacco planter. It was here that the painter got fascinated by the beauty of the tropical landscape, which resulted in the production of many pictures in which he captivated the nature of Indonesia in a wonderfully realistic and dramatic way.