| Description | The volume is a bound book of forty-seven sketches by Van Dort divided into three parts: pictures of dignitaries, tradesmen and villagers. Someone with initials C.J. has added a text to most of the pictures, which, he states, were 'taken from various sources, but principally from Sir Emerson Tennant's work on Ceylon, and from personal recollection'. |
| Admin History | The volume is largely the work of the illustrator John L K Van Dort, whose works depicting Ceylon [present day Sri Lanka] are represented in the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Leiden, Netherlands). In 1951 a book was published about this artist's work entitled 'Ceylon: the near past'. He was, according to the manuscript text (in another hand), 'a clever, self-taught artist who at that time was a Draughtsman in the Surveyor-General's office, Colombo, Ceylon. He was a native of the Island, but descended from a Dutch family who settled in Ceylon before the English took possessionÂ…'. |