AMSTERDAM, Oct 5 — Clara was partial to hay, bread and drawing a crowd.
This female rhinoceros was such a sensation in the 18th century that curious people flocked to see her all over Europe.
A new exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam revisits the extraordinary history of this iconic animal.
The exhibition, entitled Clara the Rhinoceros, charts the life and influence enjoyed by this nearly three-tonne behemoth.
Clara was only a few months old when her mother was killed by hunters near Assam, in the north-east of India. She was then taken in by the regional director of the Dutch East India Company, who raised her like any other domestic animal.
He even used to bring her into the living room at mealtimes to impress his guests.
One of them, Douwe Mout Van der Meer, was so taken with the mammal that he decided to buy Clara and take her to the Netherlands.
And so began the “rhinomania” that swept Europe between 1741 and 1758. During this time, Clara embarked on a grand European tour, skillfully orchestrated by Douwe Mout Van der Meer.
This East India Company captain became a real showman and cashed in on every appearance of his star rhinoceros.
Members of the Prussian royal family, including Frederick II himself, flocked to admire the creature, as did scholars like the mathematician Maupertuis and the painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
In 1749, Oudry painted a life-size portrait of Clara, which is one of the highlights of the Rijksmuseum exhibition.
Visitors to Clara the Rhinoceros can discover numerous works representing Clara from private collections, which have never been exhibited before.
Among them are five drawings by the German artist Johann Elias Ridinger, and a clock with a bronze statuette of Clara made by Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain around 1750.
“Nearly every image [on display] shows Clara, but we were keen to vary the way the rhinoceros is shown, with different materials,” the Rijksmuseum curator Gijs van der Ham told The Art Newspaper.
This exhibition is also an opportunity for visitors to reflect on the way animals are treated in today’s societies. Clara lived in captivity for most of her life, never seeing another rhino.
She had to endure nearly two decades of constant touring on the roads of Europe.
This is a far cry from the luxurious — and privileged — living conditions of the pandas that China regularly loans to many zoos around the world, shoring up its “soft power.”
“Clara is a subject which has meaning for society today,” Gijs van der Ham told the specialist media. “It’s about biodiversity, about the way humans treat animals. The rhinoceros is now a symbol of an animal that is threatened by humanity.”
The Clara the Rhinoceros exhibition runs until January 15, 2023, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. — ETX Studio
