RAAT, ALEXANDER J.P.

The life of Governor Joan Gideon Loten (1710 - 1789), A Personal History of a Dutch Virtuoso

Hilversum, Verloren Publishers, 2010, First printing. 24,5 x 17,5 x 5,2 cm., Hardcover. 829 pagina's. Color Illustrations. ISBN/EAN: 9789087041519. Conditie: As new, Spotless. The Life of Joan Gideon Loten, the naturalist Governor of Ceylon, gives details of his personal history and his professional career serving the Dutch Indies Company. It contains an inventory of his natural history drawings in the London Natural History Museum and Teylers Museum at Haarlem- to this day a valuable eighteenth-century treasure of the natural history of Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Loten's documents show us a virtuoso - a connoisseur, a dilligent observer of natural history and a student of natural philosophy. His papers give us a unique glimpse of his character and outstanding talents, but as well of his asthma attacks and the use of opium to alleviate his suffering. Loten's writings take us from the early-eighteenth-century narrow-minded, provincial Utrecht in the Dutch Republic to the exotic Dutch East Indies and from there to the cosmopolitan London of the latter part of the century.

De VerrassingPrivate seller

Book number: 20160030

Catalogue: History, Natural History, Biography

Keywords: Dutch East Indies Company