African wild ass and foal before 1886

This is a drawing of an African wild ass and foal by J. Fortuné Nott. While the details surrounding Nott’s life and artistic intentions remain elusive, the image offers a poignant glimpse into the complexities of colonial encounters with the natural world. The African wild ass, indigenous to the arid regions of Northeast Africa, is rendered in a way that evokes both scientific observation and a sense of exoticism. The inclusion of the foal alongside its mother introduces themes of reproduction and species survival, subtly mirroring anxieties surrounding notions of racial purity and colonial dominance. The drawing reflects broader debates about the classification and representation of non-European species within the framework of Western scientific discourse, a practice that frequently reinforced hierarchies between colonizers and colonized. Here we are confronted with questions of power, representation, and the gaze, and what it means to look, to record, and to interpret the natural world through a colonial lens.