Raden Saleh Sjarif Boestaman was a pioneering Romantic painter from the Dutch East Indies of Arab-Javanese ethnicity. He was considered to be the first "modern" artist from Indonesia, and his paintings corresponded with nineteenth-century romanticism which was popular in Europe at the time. He also expressed his cultural roots and inventiveness in his work.
Raden Saleh in c. 1872
Raden Saleh, c. 1840, credited to Friedrich Carl Albert Schreuel
Photograph of Raden Saleh's house in Cikini in c. 1875–1885
Raden Saleh in 1872
Javanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 68 million people.
Madurese in Javanese script
A Javanese noble lady (left) would address her servant with one vocabulary, and be answered with another. (Studio portrait of painter Raden Saleh's wife and a servant, colonial Batavia, 1860–1872.)
Susuhunan Pakubuwono X of Surakarta. Surakarta has been a center of Javanese culture, and its dialect is regarded as the most "refined".
A modern bilingual text in Portuguese and Javanese in Yogyakarta
