Rare print showing a Balinese man with his roosters, by the famous Dutch artist Willem G. Hofker. This print, published in the year 1938, was issued by the Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM) for tourist traveling to Bali. Cockfighting, also known in Bali as Tajen, is a part of a ritual called Tabuh Rah. The purpose of this is to spill blood on the ground to ward off evil spirits. Traditionally this is performed by three cockfights to appease the spirits before a major temple ceremony. Tubuh means to ceremoniously spill, and rah means blood in Balinese. The Balinese cockfight is bloodier than any other similar practice because the fighting cock’s feet are attached with sharp blades to quicken the spilling of blood.
This is an genuine antique print, and not a modern reproduction. Very suitable for framing.
Singed in the print: W.G. Hofker, Bali 1938
Titled: Bapak Depoer met zijn hanen korven, Badung
Willem G. Hofker,
Hofker, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, carried out a number of monumental decorative assignments during the 1920s, amongst others for the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomvaart Maatschappij (KNSM) for whom he made a few mural paintings on ships. His reputation as a portrait painter was such that he received the assignment in 1936 to paint a portrait of Queen Wilhemina for the head office of the Koninklijke Pakketvaart Maatschappi (KPM), the Royal Packet Navigation Company in Batavia. In 1938 the couple accompanied the painting to the Dutch East Indies and concluded with a trip through the archipelago, ending up in Bali. During this trip they made drawings and paintings of Indonesian subjects that could be reproduced and used by the KPM. The Hofkers socialized with many painters, including Spies, Strasser, Meyer and their good friend Rudolf Bonnet. In 1940 the couple moved to Ubud and today, many of his paintings are exhibited in the ARMA and the Neka Museum in Ubud.
Tourism to Bali - A brief history
It is hard to imagine that around the year 1900 only a hundred people visited Bali each month to stay on the island, and an expedition required bringing one’s own horses and translators. If people wanted to sleep in a western style bed, they also had to bring that themselves.
For people living in the west, a visit to the far ‘East Indies’ took months, and was a costly undertaking. Nowadays, around 17 million people visit Indonesia annually, of which 40% visit the island of Bali.
The history of tourism to Indonesia can be traced back centuries ago when kingdoms welcomed merchants from China and the Middle East to their ports, which led to the development of a bustling trade and cultural exchange. The arrival of European explorers and traders in the 16th and 17th century marked a significant turning point, as they themselves established trading posts and colonies, which attracted large numbers of European travellers who were fascinated by the exotic customs and natural beauty.
In the 19th century, travelling into Bali wasn’t easy as it was still informally ruled by multiple local kings. All foreign travellers needed permission, written in both Balinese and Dutch. Receiving a positive reply from rulers would often take up to months, resulting in only a few travellers setting out to discover the island. The 1906-8 Dutch invasion in Bali sealed their control of the island. Dutch government officials, most of them linked to businesses like the opium trade or land taxation, were the first to move to Bali. Later, the Dutch, in agreement with local Balinese kings, started to develop a Western-like infrastructure. Visitors would claim that with these roads and bridges, Bali was the most enlightened island in the Dutch East Indies. This accessibility helped prepare Bali for future tourism.
The industrial revolution was a real boost in tourism between the West and the East with the invention of steamships, which eased long distance travel in the mid-19th century. In 1869, the Suez Canal opened, reducing the distance by over 7000 kilometres, as ships no longer needed to travel around southern Africa. The Dutch Royal Rotterdam was founded in the year 1883, a shipping company that handled the postal traffic between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. The company had fast and luxurious mail ships, and soon also started transporting passengers.
Aviation services to the East Indies pioneered in the early 20th century, and in October 1924, KLM started its first intercontinental flight, connecting Amsterdam to Batavia (Jakarta). These first intercontinental flights were again a major step in the history of tourism, as the travel time to Java and Bali could be reduced immensely. In 1933 KLM proudly advertised that it took five and a half days to reach the Dutch East Indies, compared to 6 weeks on a ship; this made a considerable difference. The Amsterdam – Batavia flight was the world’s longest distance scheduled service until the outbreak of the Second World War.
The Bali Hotel in Denpasar opened in 1928, and was the first international class hotel on the island. Guests, among them Queen Elizabeth and Mahatma Gandhi, could enjoy a 20-course rijsttafel, literally meaning ‘rice table’ in Dutch, a tasting smorgasbord of local cuisine. The building of The Bali Hotel marked the beginning of Bali’s transformation from a ‘travel destination’ to ‘tourism destination’.
