THE DUTCH GOVERNOR AND THE BURGHER ARTIST – By HUGH KARUNANAYAKE GOVERNOR GIDEON LOTEN WATER COLOUR BY DE BEVERE FROM THE LOTEN COLLECTION AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM LONDON The following item appeared in a catalogue entitled Bibliotheca Neerlando Indica,  issued sometime in 1883by Martinus Neyhoff a well known bookseller at the Hague. Item: 2299-Fauna of the Indian Archipelago and of the island of Ceylon – a collection of drawings in colour representing birds, mammifers, insects etc of the zindian Archipelago and Ceylon. 144 folio sheets in two part folios – f300 The collection was bought at the auction by  PJ van Houten, Chairman of the Council and Committee of the Colonial Museum at Haarlem. In 1905 Van Houten published a memoir on John Gideon Loten and his Ceylonese artist, Pieter Cornelis de Bevere. Van Houten having bought the De Bevere collection in. 1883 described several water colours by the ...

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