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Milling pen at the elephant corral near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo

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Milling pen at the elephant corral near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo

Brandes, Jan

Milling pen at the elephant corral near Jaele, eight kilometres northeast of Negombo. The man in the rattan construction above the entry shuts the gate between the milling pen and the playpen by lowering the rattan construction.

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

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)