Nicolaas Pieneman

In March 1830 the Dutch ended the Java War by seizing Prince Diponegoro, the Javanese leader who had fought their rule for five years, after he came to talks under a safe conduct. Nicolaas Pieneman painted the scene from the victors' side: the prince stands with lowered head beside the Dutch general De Kock, who gestures him toward a waiting carriage, the tricolour flying above.

Nearly 30 years later the Javanese painter Raden Saleh painted the same arrest from the other side, giving Diponegoro a defiant stare and shrinking the Dutch officers around him. The two canvases are now read as a pair, one of conquest and one of resistance.

Pieneman was a painter of recent history and of portraits, the son of the painter Jan Willem Pieneman and a friend of King William II. He trained under his father and at the Amsterdam academy, and made his name on exactly this kind of official event, painted while the men in it were still alive.