Abstract :
When Thomas Stamford Raffles published his seminal text The History of
Java in 1817, ruins were a favourite leitmotif in British art, forming an
important element within the visual vocabulary of the picturesque. Given
the fascination in this period for the ruin, fuelled by a tradition of antiquarian
enquiry, the newly developing science of archaeology, and the increased
possibilities for travel in the wake of imperial expansion, it is not surprising
that Raffles chose to devote a whole a chapter of his publication to Java’s
ruined candis. The plates and vignettes which illustrate the chapter, created
according to pictorial conventions that were ordinarily applied to the crumbling
remains of Europe’s classical past, are amongst the most beautiful
portrayals of South-East Asia’s architectural remains. This paper examines
how these images elicited set emotional responses associated with the idea
of ruins and ruination and confirmed key stereotypes associated with the
region, linking the candis, and by implication the Javanese themselves,
with a vanished past rather thanwith a dynamic and forward-looking present.
