Joan Gideon Loten was a Dutchman who in 1732 was employed as an under merchant by the Dutch East India Co. He became Governor of the Company in Sri Lanka from 1752-1757. He was interested in the natural and social history of the region and employed Pieter Cornelius de Bevere, a self-taught by highly talented Sri Lankan artist to draw the fauna and flora of the region. Loten returned to Holland in 1758. His contribution to natural history was recognised in 1760 when he was made Fellow of the Royal Society. He died in Holland in 1789. The Loten Collection resides at the Natural History Museum, London. It consists of 154 watercolours drawn from life, most drawn by Bevere, of mammals, fish, insects, marine invertebrates, plants. The Collection is of great scientific value as it's one of the earliest collections of fauna and flora from Asia. Loten permitted the drawings to be reproduced and naturalists, artists and writers like Carl Linnaeus, Sir Joseph Banks, Thomas Pennant, Johann Reinhold Forster, George Edwards, J.F. Gmelin, Peter Brown, Sydney Parkinson made use of them. Books which have used the drawings include Peter Brown's New illustrations of zoology (1776) and the first ed. of Thomas Pennant's Indian zoology (1769,), his Synopsis of quadrupeds (1771), his History of quadrupeds (1781). Nothing is known about the artist after 1758 other than he had died before 1781. Carr states a few of the Loten Collection drawings copied by Sydney Parkinson are held at the National Library of Australia.