ABRAHAM SALM (1882-1967)

 

“De waterval Baón tusschen Passaroean en Lawang”
(The waterfall Baón between Pasaruan and Lawang)

 

Signed A. Salm and titled on a label on the reverse

 

Oil on panel, 15.5 x 22.5 cm

 

Provenance:

David Nuysink (1838-1911), son-in-law of Abraham Salm, thence by descent to the previous owner
 

Note:

Abraham Salm spent twenty-nine years in Indonesia, first as a merchant in Surabaja and later as the owner of a tobacco plantation in Malang. Probably self-taught, he made numerous drawings and sketches of the landscapes of Eastern Java. Later, back in the Netherlands, he developed these sketches into oil paintings. In the second half of the 19th century his paintings of exotic Indonesia became very popular through the lithographs made by the celebrated painter and lithographer Johan Conrad Grieve (1837-1891), commissioned and published by the influential art dealer Frans Buffa & Zonen in 1872 and entitled Java naar schilderijen en tekeningen van A. Salm, a collection of twenty four lithographs of Javanese landscapes (see: Uit Verre Streken, March 2013, item 38). Salm’s painting style is typical for the 19th-century explorers, influenced by the romantics of the first half of the century.