Gerrit van Raalten

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Outanata warriors (New Guinea), drawing by van Raalten, from Windsor, 1853

Gerrit van Raalten (born August 20, 1797 in Harderwijk , † April 17, 1829 at sea, off the island of Timor ) was a Dutch taxidermist and draftsman .

Live and act

Gerrit van Raalten was the son of Reijer van Raalten from Harderwijk and Cornelia van Raalten, geb. Rubble. As a member of the Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsch-Indië he accompanied Heinrich Kuhl , Johan Coenraad van Hasselt and Gerrit Laurens Keultjes to Java in 1820 . The Commission for the Study of the Natural History of the Dutch Colonies in the East Indian Archipelago started its excursions in the highlands around Buitenzorg . After the early death of Kuhl and Keultjes, van Raalten and van Hasselt continued collecting activities in the province of Bantam . In addition to his actual job as a taxidermist, he also took on the drawing of the finds, for which he developed an extraordinary talent. Van Hasselt's death in 1823 left him the last member of the commission. Java's Governor General Godert Alexander Gerard Philip van der Capellen entrusted him with organizing the shipment of the collected material to Europe.

The second research group of the natural-certified commissie around Heinrich Boie , Heinrich Christian Macklot , Salomon Müller and Pieter van Oort was supported by van Raalten, who was meanwhile familiar with the area. From 1826 they explored the mountain ranges east of Buitenzorg (Preanger Regentschappen), where van Raalten was seriously injured by a Java rhinoceros the following year . After his recovery, he was one of those naturalists of the Commission, during the establishment of a subsidiary in the Netherlands in 1828 Guinea , the fauna and flora explored the island. Van Raalten's drawings were the first images of New Guinea taken from nature. In October, he and Macklot, Müller and Alexander Zippelius took part in the scientific investigation of the island of Timor. On the way back to the Commission base in Kupang, Gerrit van Raalten fell ill with a severe fever . He died at sea in a simple boat near the town of Oekoesi , where Macklot had him brought ashore and buried.

Gerrit van Raalten's scientific importance consists of his contribution to the rich collections of the Natuurkundige Commissie from the years 1820–1829, which forms an important basis for the zoological collection of the Leiden Museum of Natural History ( Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie , today Naturalis ). The type specimen of the now extinct Java tiger ( Panthera tigris sondaica Temminck , 1844) can be traced back to his collecting or preparation. His numerous drawings have been published in many scientific works.

Honors

Orchid Armodorum distichum van Breda , 1827 ( Armadorum sulingi Schlechter , 1911), drawing by van Raalten, from van Breda, 1827

literature

  • Abraham Jacob van der Aa : Biographical woordenboek der Nederlanden. JJ van Brederode (Ed.), Haarlem 1874, Vol. 16, pp. 2-3 pdf
  • Handelingen en Geschriften van het Indisch Genootschap te 's-Gravenhage. HC Susan (Ed.), 'S-Gravenhage (Den Haag) 1858, pp. 88-92. Digitized
  • Otto Finsch : New Guinea and its inhabitants. C. Ed. Müller, Bremen 1865, 185 p. Digitized version
  • Charles Fransen, Lipke Bijdeley Holthuis & Janneke Adema (1997): Type-catalog of the Decapod Crustacea in the collections of the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum, with appendices of pre-1900 collectors and material. Zoologische Verhandelingen, Leiden 1997, 311, pp. 1-344. pdf
  • Salomon Müller : Reizen en Onderzoekingen in the Indian archipelago. F. Muller (Ed.), Amsterdam 1857, Vol. 2, 350 p. Digitized
  • Hermann Schlegel : Images of new or incompletely known amphibians, designed from life and accompanied by explanatory texts. Arnz & Comp., Düsseldorf 1837-44, 141 pp., 50 plates. 50 color plates
  • Jakob Gijsbert Samuel van Breda: Genera et species orchidearum et asclepiadearum quas in itinere per insulam Java. Collegerunt H. Kuhl and JC Van Hasselt. JGS van Breda (Ed.), Gandavi (Gent) 1827, 88 p. Digitalisat
  • George Windsor: The Native Races of the Indian Archipelago. Papuans. London 1853, 239 p. Digitized

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Genealogy of Ida Siemons Reijer van Raalten ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / home.versatel.nl
  2. ↑ Finsch 1865, p. 7.
  3. ↑ Müller 1865, p. 320.
  4. ↑ Naturalis Vertebrate Collection
  5. ↑ Extinct Mammals Panthera tigris sondaica Temminck, 1844 ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.petermaas.nl
  6. ↑ cf. Schlegel 1837-44; van Breda 1827.
personal data
SURNAME Raalten, Gerrit van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch taxidermist and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Harderwijk
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1829
Place of death Pante Macassar