Album of 116 drawings, mainly portraits, made in Ceylon
Painter: Esaias Boursse
Year:
-
Medium: brush
Description: The drawing book of Esaias Boursse has a page bound along the front with the text 'I underwrote this drawing book on Silon and sold it to my brother for my contentment, on 1 January 1671'. The term 'drawing book' can also mean a loose collection of drawings. Most of the drawings were made in Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was called until 1972, while only a few were made during his brief stay at the Cape of Good Hope). The bound 'Tijkenboeck' consists of twenty uneven quires, some of which are incomplete. The drawing book now contains 116 sheets, but at least 34 sheets have been previously excised. Whether these have included drawings and where these sheets have gone cannot be said - perhaps they will turn up again. The two watermarks on the paper used by Boursse indicate that the material most likely came from the Netherlands. Boursse may have brought the double folio sheets himself, but it is also possible that he received them from an employee of the VOC on the outward journey in Batavia or during his stay in Sri Lanka. In any case, it seems clear that he cut the large sheets of about 44 x 34.5 cm lengthwise and folded the two leaf sections in such a way that he could easily work with them outside. Upon binding, the date of which is not known, the sheets were trimmed, so that in some cases the drawings are no longer complete. Perhaps the volume was in the hands of a child of a later owner, for we see in a few clumsy sketches and added words. The 'Tijkenboeck' was not paginated after binding, the numbering of the sheets is of rather recent date.
