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Lot Essay
Gerrit Schouten was born in 1799 in Paramaribo, the administrative centre of the Dutch colony of Surinam, the son of the poet Hendrick Schouten and Suzanna Johanna Hanssen, a free coloured native of Surinam. A botanical and animal painter, he is best known for over forty dioramas which describe the Dutch colony of Surinam in the early 19th century, the majority now in institutional collections in the Netherlands. Schouten was commissioned to produce two dioramas of the indigenous peoples of Surinam (the Caribs and Arowaks) for the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden of King William I and was awarded a gold medal for the dioramas by the King. One of these royal commissions is another diorama of an Arowak Camp (1827) which is now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, for which see C. Medendorp, Kijkkasten uit Suriname De Diorama's van Gerrit Schouten, Amsterdam, 2008, pp.94-7.
Schouten's dioramas range in size from 35cm to 170cm wide, the glazed cabinets made from Surinam hardwoods and European soft woods, including from boxes used to import goods into the colony. The models, carefully shaped to work in correct perspective, are made of paper and mounted with an animal glue. Most, as here, bear a label in the lower left corner of the case with the artist's signature. ' ... Schouten is best known today for his dioramas ... In this pre-photography era, he introduced the 'raree show' to the colony, capturing the memories of plantation owners, merchants and travellers of their property or their stay in Suriname. Made to order, these were expensive items. Some dioramas cost no less than 500 guilders, the sort of amount one might have paid for an enslaved person. Schouten was born and bred in Paramaribo and was able to live from his artistic work, and this led him to being considered Suriname's first artist. ... We do not now precisely how Schouten made these figures ... It is likely that the artist first moistened the paper before shaping it into the desired form, possibly using a mould. The figures are built up of multiple layers stuck together using warm bone glue and sometimes reinforced with a tiny knot of paper. All are hollow and painted only on the front facing surface (the scene could only be viewed from one angle). Schouten painted a gouache landscape on the sheet of paper to form the background. Clearly he was proud to have made everything from paper, because he used labels, either attached to the back of the cabinet or as a small strip in casing, that read: 'Sculpted from paper by Gerrit van Schouten'. ... A relatively large number of these particular dioramas are known to exist, and although it is clear that Schouten worked according to a fixed pattern, no two versions are identical.' (E. Sint Nicolaas, Shackles and Bonds, Suriname and the Netherlands since 1600, (Rijksmuseum), Breda, 2018, p.127).
Surinam or Dutch Guyana was a flourishing plantation colony ceded to the Dutch by the British in 1667. The territory attracted the Dutch planters who had been expelled from Brazil in the mid-17th century and produced sugar on large plantations worked by slaves from West Africa through the 18th to the mid-19th century, the slaves replaced by indentured labour from India and Java after abolition in Surinam in 1863.
Schouten's dioramas range in size from 35cm to 170cm wide, the glazed cabinets made from Surinam hardwoods and European soft woods, including from boxes used to import goods into the colony. The models, carefully shaped to work in correct perspective, are made of paper and mounted with an animal glue. Most, as here, bear a label in the lower left corner of the case with the artist's signature. ' ... Schouten is best known today for his dioramas ... In this pre-photography era, he introduced the 'raree show' to the colony, capturing the memories of plantation owners, merchants and travellers of their property or their stay in Suriname. Made to order, these were expensive items. Some dioramas cost no less than 500 guilders, the sort of amount one might have paid for an enslaved person. Schouten was born and bred in Paramaribo and was able to live from his artistic work, and this led him to being considered Suriname's first artist. ... We do not now precisely how Schouten made these figures ... It is likely that the artist first moistened the paper before shaping it into the desired form, possibly using a mould. The figures are built up of multiple layers stuck together using warm bone glue and sometimes reinforced with a tiny knot of paper. All are hollow and painted only on the front facing surface (the scene could only be viewed from one angle). Schouten painted a gouache landscape on the sheet of paper to form the background. Clearly he was proud to have made everything from paper, because he used labels, either attached to the back of the cabinet or as a small strip in casing, that read: 'Sculpted from paper by Gerrit van Schouten'. ... A relatively large number of these particular dioramas are known to exist, and although it is clear that Schouten worked according to a fixed pattern, no two versions are identical.' (E. Sint Nicolaas, Shackles and Bonds, Suriname and the Netherlands since 1600, (Rijksmuseum), Breda, 2018, p.127).
Surinam or Dutch Guyana was a flourishing plantation colony ceded to the Dutch by the British in 1667. The territory attracted the Dutch planters who had been expelled from Brazil in the mid-17th century and produced sugar on large plantations worked by slaves from West Africa through the 18th to the mid-19th century, the slaves replaced by indentured labour from India and Java after abolition in Surinam in 1863.