Combat between a buffalo and tiger

Contextualised by the transformation of the Javanese aristocratic society in the early 19th century and their engagements with the Dutch colonial administration, Raden Saleh, himself a Javanese aristocrat, emerged as an artist in search of local imageries comparable to those he had seen in the works of European Romanticists. This is a balance he strove to reach between his European training and his attachment to his homeland. As such, he maintained fascination with the mysterious, the dark, the spectacular and the wild. He found nature the most appropriate stage for these elements and presented the forces of nature as both physical and psychological challenge against man's will and control; the combat at its most dramatic form is the specialty of the artist who aspired to emulate the French Romanticist - Eugene Delacroix.