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Doping elephants at the elephants' corral near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo

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Doping elephants at the elephants' corral near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo

Brandes, Jan

Doping elephants at the elephants' pen near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo.

Every seven years or so, elephants were rounded up and held captive in this pen. At the point that Jan Brandes visited this pen it held 25 elephants.

In the foreground VOC officials and their servants.

This drawing is part of a series of 13 illustrations taking the elephant pen as their subject.

Please contact Rijksmuseum Amsterdam for reuse and copyrights.

Sources and literature

Bruijn, M. de en R. Raben, The world of Jan Brandes, 1743-1808: Drawings of a Dutch traveller in Batavia, Ceylon and Southern Africa (2004)