Mr. M. Donk was the draughtsman who made the drawing of the Achehnese dwelling-house reproduced in Vol. I of The Achehnese. He is acknowledged by Snouck Hurgronje in a footnote to the chapter on the Achehnese house: “The drawing was made by Mr. M. Donk, and I owe the full explanatory notes to Mr. L. J. C. Van Es, Engineer.”
The plate is intended to show “clearly the principal features of the Achehnese dwelling-house.” Its value to the work is considerable, for the Achehnese house — a pile-dwelling of timber, bamboo and attap, with a high-pitched roof, a complex internal arrangement of verandahs and inner apartments, and a notched-log ladder of access — is more readily understood from a careful drawing than from any verbal description. Donk’s drawing, supplemented by Van Es’s technical notes, supplied readers of The Achehnese with what was then the most authoritative pictorial representation of an Achehnese domestic building.
Donk belongs to the class of colonial draughtsmen, surveyors and military artists whose work, often undertaken in difficult conditions, has preserved for posterity the appearance of places, buildings and objects in the Netherlands Indies that have since been altered or destroyed. The Achehnese house, in particular, suffered heavily during the decades of war and reconstruction that followed the Dutch intervention of 1873, so that drawings such as Donk’s are now important historical documents in their own right.
Apart from this single mention, Donk does not appear further in The Achehnese. His name is preserved in the work, however, alongside that of Van Es, as that of the artist responsible for one of its most useful illustrations.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
Mr. M. Donk was the draughtsman who made the drawing of the Achehnese dwelling-house reproduced in Vol. I of The Achehnese. He is acknowledged by Snouck Hurgronje in a footnote to the chapter on the Achehnese house: “The drawing was made by Mr. M. Donk, and I owe the full explanatory notes to Mr. L. J. C. Van Es, Engineer.”
The plate is intended to show “clearly the principal features of the Achehnese dwelling-house.” Its value to the work is considerable, for the Achehnese house — a pile-dwelling of timber, bamboo and attap, with a high-pitched roof, a complex internal arrangement of verandahs and inner apartments, and a notched-log ladder of access — is more readily understood from a careful drawing than from any verbal description. Donk’s drawing, supplemented by Van Es’s technical notes, supplied readers of The Achehnese with what was then the most authoritative pictorial representation of an Achehnese domestic building.
Donk belongs to the class of colonial draughtsmen, surveyors and military artists whose work, often undertaken in difficult conditions, has preserved for posterity the appearance of places, buildings and objects in the Netherlands Indies that have since been altered or destroyed. The Achehnese house, in particular, suffered heavily during the decades of war and reconstruction that followed the Dutch intervention of 1873, so that drawings such as Donk’s are now important historical documents in their own right.
Apart from this single mention, Donk does not appear further in The Achehnese. His name is preserved in the work, however, alongside that of Van Es, as that of the artist responsible for one of its most useful illustrations.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.