WD2985

View of the Cathcart monument, Anjer-Lor, West Java. c.1815.

By Jacobus Flikkenschild

Inscribed on front in ink: ‘View of the Monument Erected to the Memory of the Right Honorable Lord Cathcart, ordered by the Honorable Thomas Stamfort Raffles Lieutenant Governor of Java etc.’ ‘etc.’ ‘etc.’ ‘With its Adjacent Hills taken from the Back Varandoh of the Resident House in the Fortress of Anjier by Js. Flikkenschild’. Also key to various parts of the landscape. Watermark: ‘1813’

Pen and ink and wash; 24.8 by 38.3 cm.

Note: Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Allan Cathcart (1759-88) was appointed in 1787 British ambassador to China but died at sea aboard the ship ‘Vestal’ in the Straits of Bangka, off Sumatra, on 10 June 1788. To avoid burial in shark-infested waters, the ship returned to Anjer where Catheart's body was interred on the morning of 16 June to a salute of minute guns fired from the ‘V'estal’ and of volleys of small arms. A monument to his memory, comprising a painted panel with a Latin inscriptions was erected by his companions before they returned to England. The monument was designed by Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817), who exhibited a painting of the burial scene at the Royal Academy in the following year. When Lord Macartney's mission to China called at Anjer-lor in 1793, William Alexander (1767-1816) made at least three water-colour drawings of the monument, one of which, now in the British Museum, served for the coloured engraving by T. Medland in John Barrow's ‘Voyage to’ ‘Cochin-China’ (London, 1806). After the British conquest of Java in 1811, the Governor-General, Lord Minto, who was related to the Cathcart family, inquired about the monument. Raffles reported on 12 August 1812 that it had been found on the beach when British troops landed in west Java in the previous year, but that he had now directed that the slab should be raised and surrounded by a rail at the place of interment 'with such Brick Work and ornament on a Simple plan as the Country affords. . .' The present drawing by the Dutch artist, Jacobus Flikkenschild, depicts the completed monument as it was in 1815. The drawing is apparently the model for the uncoloured aquatint in Lady Raffles's ‘Memoir of the Life and Public’ ‘Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’ (London, 1830), which was intended for inclusion in the second edition of ‘The History of Java.’ The aquatint can be attributed to William Daniell for various reasons, not least on stylistic grounds, as can be seen in the typical Malay figures. The monument no longer exists, having disappeared some time between the end of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Second World War.