Javanese Man in Court Dress, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

A Javanese man in court dress, an original antique wood engraving from Auguste Wahlen's Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde, published in Brussels between 1843 and 1844. The plate is lettered "Javanais en habit de cour", a Javanese man in the dress of the court. The Javanese courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta survived into the nineteenth century as princely houses under Dutch authority, and their ceremonial dress, with its strict gradations of rank and its regulated use of batik patterns, was one of the subjects European compilers of costume books returned to again and again. A costume print of this kind records what a Brussels publisher of the 1840s believed that dress to look like. The sheet is a wood engraving on paper and is uncolored, as issued in this part of the series, and the crispness of the block work is what carries the image.

Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde was published in Brussels by Auguste Wahlen at the Librairie Historique-Artistique between 1843 and 1844. The four volumes set out to describe the dress, customs, occupations and social divisions of the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, drawing on travel narratives, earlier costume books and other sources then treated as authoritative, and they carried approximately one hundred and ninety to two hundred plates, the count varying between copies and editions.

Wahlen was the publisher and compiler rather than the artist, and where a name such as Duverger, Pannemaker, Mercier, Lisbet, Markaert or Vermorcken appears on a sheet it belongs to the illustrator or the engraver, and no artist is attributed here without one.

The plates are wood engravings on paper. The images should be read as a nineteenth century European interpretation of the cultures they show rather than as a documentary record, which is a large part of what makes the series interesting to historians of the period. Court dress plates of this kind pair well with the other Javanese subjects in the series, and a group of four or six hung together reads as a considered set rather than a single decorative sheet.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small marginal spots and softened corners; the image itself is clean and strong.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.