Java’s ruined candis and the British picturesque ideal

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.