Straat met figuren c. 1660

Wouter Schouten created this watercolor titled "Straat met figuren", or "Street with figures" during the Dutch Golden Age, when the Dutch East India Company was at its peak. As a surgeon in service of the Company, Schouten traveled extensively, and this image gives us a glimpse into the colonial gaze of 17th-century Dutch society. The street scenes present a vision of the "exotic East," filtered through the lens of European expectations and assumptions. These images, rendered in delicate washes of gray, document the artist's encounters with the people of the East, capturing their daily activities and interactions. Yet, there's a flattening that occurs. These individuals are reduced to types, their identities subsumed by the artist's desire to classify and catalogue. The street becomes a stage for the performance of colonial power dynamics, where the artist assumes the role of observer and recorder, while the subjects are rendered as objects of study. It prompts us to consider how these images shaped European perceptions of the East and how they continue to inform our understanding of colonial history.