WD3003

Gunung Gede and the Tjiliwung, Java, with the memorial to the first Lady Raffles. 1816.

By Mary Fendall (1794-1886).

Inscribed on reverse: ‘Gunung Gédé and the River Chiliwang’.

Pencil; 30.2 by 45 cm.

Note: This is perhaps the most interesting of the five drawings by Mary Fendall as it depicts the Indonesian village at the rear of Government House, Buitenzorg, and in the right-hand foreground the cenotaph which Raffles erected to the memory of his first wife, Olivia Mariamne, who died at Buitenzorg on Saturday, 26 November 1814. On this cenotaph he had inscribed the words of a poem by her which she included in a letter to John Leyden dated 3 August 1808:

‘ Oh Thou! whom ne'er my constant heart’

‘ One moment hath forgot,’

‘ Tho' fate severe hath made us part,’

‘ I'll still forget thee not’-

The cenotaph itself was erected during 1815, so that Mary Fendall's drawing is apparently the earliest extant drawing of it. There is an uncoloured aquatint showing much the same view facing page 191 of Lady Raffles's ‘Memoir’, but the garden and path leading to the cenotaph are more formally laid out. This feature would seem to indicate that the aquatint is based on a later drawing than that of Mary Fendall. There are, however, certain difficulties, not least that the garden depicted in the aquatint is quite unlike the one which was designed and laid out after 1817. Given this fact, and the otherwise remarkable similarity between the aquatint and Mary Fendall's drawing, there seems little doubt that the latter served as the model for the aquatint, and that the additional features represent William Daniell's attempt to achieve a better artistic effect. This was the practice of many professional engravers and was at times bitterly resented by the amateur artists concerned.