Een Boschbrand. A fine chromolithograph by C.W. Mieling, after the original painting by Raden Saleh.

The Hague,: Koninklijke Steendruckerij., 1867. Original chromolithograph, 31 x 44 cm approx. A very good example. Framed and glazed. Raden Saleh was born near Semarang in 1811. His uncle, the Regent, encouraged his early interest in drawing which was later stimulated by the Belgian artist A.A.J. Payen. He was taken to the Netherlands at the age of eighteen where he took drawing and painting lessons from Cornelius Kruseman, and later worked under one of the best landscape artists of the day, Andreas Schelfhout. He spent more than twenty years in Europe meeting many artists and notables before returning to Batavia in 1851. In 1847 he travelled to Algeria with Horace Vernet, the celebrated orientalist painter. The engraver, Carl Wilhelm Mieling, was born in Germany in 1815, and first worked as a lithographer and publisher in Rotterdam before moving to The Hague. His printing works became known for the quality of their products and he was granted the right to use the term 'Koninklijk'(Royal). This print is from his greatest work, De Indische Archipel. Een Boschbrand (A forest fire), was first painted in oils between 1847 and 1849. Originally destined for the Royal Collection in the Netherlands, it was exhibited by the King in the 1883 Colonial Exhibition in Amsterdam. It has recently been acquired by the National Gallery, Singapore, where it is considered to be one of the masterpieces of this museum. It has been described as "the most spectacular and intriguing [work] the artist ever painted".** This fine chromolithograph print was produced in 1867. It depicts two buffalo and two tigers in spectacular flight from fire on the edge of a cliff. It is illustrated as plate 46 in Storer, Russell, Between Worlds, Singapore, 2017. ** Marie-Odette Scalliet, in The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh: A star in the firmament of Indonesian modern visual art. Bastin & Brommer, n.620; Marie-Odette Scalliet, in The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh: A star in the firmament of Indonesian modern visual art, in Low Sze Wee (editor) Charting Thoughts, Singapore, 2017.