(b. 1612, Leiden, d. 1680, Haarlem)

The Ox Cart 1638 Oil on canvas, 61 x 88 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris

The Dutch Republic settled overseas territories as colonies, often gained in battle with other seafaring powers. For their apparent truthfulness, Dutch pictures show little of colonial working life, concentrating rather on colonial benefits to trade, art, and science. The most impressive colonial artistic project was the transcription in texts, maps, and pictures of the sites, peoples, fauna, and flora of eastern Brazil, under Dutch control from 1630 to 1654. Scientists trained in medicine, biology, and cartography, and artists, including Frans Post, gathered material for the 'Historia Naturalis Brasiliae', a large natural and ethnographic study of Brazil, illustrated with 533 woodcuts of exotic discoveries from swordfish to chiefs of indigenous tribes.

Frans Post's records of Brazilian rivers, roads, and fields fit well-established schemes of Dutch landscape painting. But for its inclusion of workers of African origin and the exotic tree, his Ox Cart resembles near-contemporary Dutch pictures. Although not intended perniciously, such paintings of Dutch Brazil mark the indigenous scene as Dutch indeed, easily and rightfully accessible to Dutch cultivation.

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Author: POST, Frans Title: The Ox Cart Time-line: 1651-1700 School: Dutch Form: painting