W.G. Hofker (1902-1981), View from Abangan

1947, conté on pigmented paper, 32 x 25 cm

Auction 22 September 2024 | Lot# 160

This view of the Balinese landscape, titled 'View from Abangan', was drawn by painter Willem Gerard Hofker. It shows a special vista that the painter looked out on from his garden in Ubud. A beautiful area he described in a letter to his parents as ' A vast landscape with deep valleys and ravines cut through, into which then sawah terraces descend left and right. Not to mention the mountain range beyond'. A 'paradise of light and openness where I found a great place to work in the silence and solitude'. The house was called Abangan, meaning a 'house by the Abang' which is an aqueduct. It stood above Ubud's main road on a plateau between two important temples. The Pura Dalem on one side and the Pura Gunung Lebah on the other. A temple called the Pura Tjampoean in Hofker's time.

Willem Hofker and his wife Maria lived and worked in Bali for five years starting June 1938. In March 1940, on the advice of their good friend, the painter Rudolf Bonnet, the couple moved into a cottage in Ubud that stood in the yard of the then prince Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati. Ubud was situated at a higher altitude than their earlier stay in Denpasar which brought with it a pleasantly cooler climate. Thereby, the change of scenery, for variety in work was another advantage. Quoting the painter 'For studious people, there is here a huge field of simple natural primeval elements to great classical architecture. I am sometimes ashamed to experience it all like this, and work very hard to capture the best of it'.

Fascinated by the view and work on the sawah terraces, the Hofker's used to sit daily in the large Baleh (a roof on stilts) from which, on a clear day, one could see the mountain range to the north. It was also an exquisite place to work in by oneself, as the many diary notes show. But only a small number of his painted masterpieces have been preserved that were produced from this tropical backdrop out of that Baleh. A perfect example is the magisterial 1941 painting titled 'Ni Raping on Abangan' which is in the collection of the Art Retrait museum in Singapore.

There are also a few drawings within Willem Hofker's oeuvre that depict Abangan's sawah landscape from different directions. But what makes this drawing, offered here, so special is that Hofker has added a sacred offering house with a girl. She is squatting near her decorated basket in which offerings are prepared. None of these other view drawings have had this feature done before. However, we do recognise her from another drawing dated December 1943. In it, one could see her also at that same sacrificial house, complete with the repeating steps and lotus ornaments on the side, but in front of the big gate of the 'Dalam Poeri Tebe Saja'.(can be seen in book Hofker S. & Orsini G., 2013, on p. 140, ill. 173). This temple located in the hamlet of Peliatan is better known by its current name, Pura Dalem Puri. The sacrificial house and temple can still be admired there today. But the enchanting unobstructed view from Abangan, like so much scenery today in Bali, has changed extremely and is only thus captured in time on this drawing. A unique drawing in conté with gouache on a background of splashed watercolour paint in many shades. This 'splashing technique' Hofker developed together with Bonnet in Bali and what he has thus also applied here to depict the diversity the tropical landscape. A lost image of Bali that Hofker admired so much.

In 1947, Willem Hofker was commissioned by 'Het Hollandse Uitgevershuis' in Amsterdam to illustrate two calendars with Balinese themes. He supplied two sets of six lithographs for which he himself had made the drawings directly on the stone. In his booklet of delivered work, Hofker noted these series as no. 494 and no. 495. They show the traditional Balinese female dancers, offering carrying girls and temples we know well from Hofker's earlier work. But also some three composed representations specially designed for these calendars. The drawing offered here is one of these. It was placed in the calendar to accompany the months July-August and printed by the famous Senefelder printing company in Amsterdam. A number of hand-signed copies of the lithographs including proofs are in the collection of the Teylers museum in Haarlem and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. 

© Seline Hofker, mei 2024

Photos from Hofker personal archive © 

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