Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (circa 1811-1880) and the Java War (1825-30) : A Dissident Family History

The childhood years of the famous Arab-Javanese painter, Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (ca. 1811-80), in Semarang from his birth in ca. May 1811 up to the Java War (1825-30) are crucial for understanding his subsequent attitudes towards the Dutch and their colonial rule in Java as expressed through his art. Growing up in the household of his uncle, the enlightened Semarang regent (bupati), Suroadimenggolo V (1765/8-1826; in office 1809-22), and his Calcutta-educated cousins, Raden Mas Saleh and Raden Mas Sukur, the young painter was a direct witness to the tragedy which overwhelmed his close family in the lead up to Diponegoro’s great rebellion. From a position of trust and cooperation with Raffles and other senior members of the British interim administration (1811-16), within a short decade (1816-26) Suroadimenggolo’s world was destroyed. Both his and his sons’ outspokenness and pro-British sentiments became a liability following the Dutch return in August 1816. This led to their dismissal from their posts in Semarang (1822) and Lasem (1824) respectively, and worse happened following the outbreak of the Java War, when both he and his elder son, Raden Mas Saleh, suffered arrest (8 September 1825) and lengthy detention on Dutch naval vessels when the regent’s younger son, Sukur, joined Diponegoro’s forces. Even after his early death on 15 November 1826, the aged Semarang bupati’s body found no peace in the Terboyo (Semarang) family graveyard. Sent east to distant Madura, it was later (20 July 1827) reinterred in the royal burial ground of his son-in-law, the Sultan of Sumenep, Paku Nataningrat (r. 1811-54), while the Dutch authorities sought to cover their tracks with misleading obituary notices (Appendices Ia and Ib). The present article, using a range of published and archival sources, illustrates this tragic family history, and speculates on the likely effects such events may have had on the young painter, Saleh, as he began his career under the aegis of his Belgian mentor, Antoine Auguste Joseph Payen (1792-1853). Two further appendices provide a Bustaman family tree (Appendix II) and a Brief Chronology of Kiai Adipati Suroadimenggolo and his family, 1865-1880 (Appendix III).