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

A Javanese man in war 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 costume de guerre", which the volume gives as a Javanese man in the dress of war. Java in the 1840s was the administrative heart of the Netherlands East Indies, and the decades before this costume print appeared had seen the Java War of 1825 to 1830 and the imposition of the cultivation system, so martial dress on the island was a subject European readers followed with close and often uneasy interest. Wahlen placed Java within his Oceania section rather than with Asia, a classification that tells the modern reader as much about nineteenth century European geography as about the island itself. 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. Javanese warrior prints of this kind group well with the other Java and Timor subjects from the same series, and a set of four or six hung together makes a far stronger wall than a single sheet.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a small edge nick and soft wear to one corner; the image itself is clean and crisp.

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