Oil on Linen, 116 x 89cm, 2014.

Jan Pieterszoon Coen , 4th Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, was an officer of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. He was renowned for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies.The Dutch East India Company is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world.

The proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) goes by the Malay name monyet belanda ("Dutch monkey"), or even orang belanda ("Dutchman"), as Indonesians remarked that the Dutch colonisers had similarly large bellies and noses. Contemporary portraits of JP Coen display both distention of the belly and a protuberant nose.

The proboscis monkey is endemic to the island of Borneo. It can now only be found in just 16 protected areas. Its total population has decreased by more than 50% in the past 36–40 years to 2008 due to ongoing habitat loss.

According to the WWF the loss of protected lowland tropical rainforest, chiefly given over to the production of palm oil in response to global demand, is roughly equivalent to the land area of the Netherlands. As the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, it is estimated that palm oil listed as an ingredient in about half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets.

Based on a contemporary portrait of JP Coen, the painting places a proboscis monkey in the pose of the sitter. The monkey is holding a Palm Oil frond in place of a halberd and at bottom right is the logo of the VOC.