sketcher and cartographer, arrived at Batavia (Indonesia) in 1634 to work for the Dutch East India Company. For two years he acted as clerk for Arnoud Gijsels on a tour of inspection in the Moluccas; his drawings from this period were rediscovered in the late 1980s. In 1641 he was in Japanese waters and drew a map of Nagasaki (extant). In 1642 Antony Van Diemen appointed Gilsemans cartographer to Abel Tasman’s expedition. His instructions were 'to make exact drawings of the appearance and shape of the lands, islands, capes, bights, inlets, bays, rivers, shoals, sandbanks, reefs, cliffs and rocks …’. He is thought to have been responsible for the coastal profiles in Tasman’s journal (only copies of which survive) and therefore the first European to make an image of Van Diemen’s Land. Gilsemans accompanied Tasman on a second voyage to the west coast of New Guinea in 1644, then was employed as an architect and builder at Ambron in 1645. He died soon afterwards, his widow Annetjen Bogaerts remarrying in March or April 1647 at Batavia.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
