Portrait of Sosro Kartono

In September 1899 a young Javanese student stood up at a congress on Dutch language and literature in Ghent and declared himself the enemy of anyone who would make his people European, or half-European, and trample on their traditions. He was Sosrokartono, then a student at Leiden and the first Indonesian officially admitted to a Dutch university. He also held, as the Frans Hals Museum notes, that Javanese should learn Dutch, to strengthen the ties between the two countries. His younger sister was Kartini, whose letters about the education of Javanese women were published in the Netherlands in 1911. Isaac Israëls painted him around 1916 in his studio in The Hague, one of several Indonesian students he portrayed there, standing at full length on a tall, narrow canvas. Sosrokartono went on to work as a war correspondent and as a translator for the League of Nations.