Portrait of a Peranakan gentleman

Title

Year/Period

1910s

Region

Java

Object Type

paintings (visual works), positives (photographs), handcoloured photographs

Material

wood (plant material), photographic paper, glass (material), pastel (material)

Technique

photographic processes, painting (image-making), hand-colouring, photographic printing techniques

Dimension

Object size: 106.8 x 60.2 x 5.8 cm

Accession No.

2015-00508

Collection of

Peranakan Museum

This is a full length studio portrait of a Peranakan man in a suit holding white gloves in his left hand. It was very common for Peranakans in the Dutch East Indies and the Straits Settlements to depict themselves in Western outfits like this as a means of visually identifying with the colonial elite whom they worked closely with. For Chinese Peranakans, ancestral portraits do not just seek to commemorate a death but serves the function of extending the presence of the deceased beyond death.