Portrait of a District Head (Wedono)

The sheet of paper this man is painted on is nearly two metres tall, so he stands close to life-size, arms folded, sandals on his feet. Over a batik cloth patterned with dark stars he wears a dark blue jacket with gold fastenings and gold embroidery at the collar and cuffs, a Western cut, or one inspired by the West, combined with Javanese dress. A patterned headcloth covers his hair, and a kris sits at his back. The Rijksmuseum's title calls him a wedono, a district head, one step below the regent in the Javanese hierarchy through which the Dutch governed Java. He is one of five figures in a series painted between about 1820 and 1870. The museum describes them as types rather than portraits of named men, and thinks they were probably made by a non-Western artist.