Portrait of a Javanese Military Official

In European pictures, the Rijksmuseum notes, Indonesians usually appeared as adversaries, as colonial subjects, or as 'innocent' primitives. This man was painted on Java, then under Dutch colonial rule, sometime between about 1820 and 1870, and he looks straight out at us with a heavy moustache and a frown. The museum's title calls him a military official. He wears a sleeveless red jacket edged with scalloped gold, a Western-inspired cut worn over Javanese dress. A black cloth scattered with small gold stars falls over a finely woven red and brown one, and flowers are tucked at his temples beneath a black headdress trimmed with gold. The museum describes the five figures of this series as resolute and self-assured. Like two of the others, he carries a Balinese kris at his back, its hilt rising above his shoulder.