Coast near Tunis 

Hercules Brabazon Brabazon painted "Coast near Tunis" with watercolor, during a period when the visual arts were reckoning with the expansion of European empires. Brabazon, born into a wealthy family in 1821, was emblematic of a certain kind of privileged traveler. His loose brushstrokes and soft color palette feel more like impressions than precise depictions. But what does it mean to create impressions of a place already marked by colonial power? How do the gazes of artists like Brabazon intersect with the complex political and cultural landscape of a place like Tunis? This watercolor, with its quiet beauty, invites us to reflect on the dynamics of seeing and being seen, of representing and perhaps misrepresenting, across lines of culture and power.