Gezicht op de brug over de Erdre te Nantes 1637 - 1678

Willem Schellinks made this drawing, titled 'View of the bridge over the Erdre at Nantes', using pen and brown ink with gray wash. Schellinks made several voyages to France, England, and Italy. During the 17th century, this privilege was reserved for male artists and the resulting images often reflect a specific, gendered way of seeing. Nantes, as a port city, was central to France's international trade, and its prosperity was deeply entangled with colonialism and, of course, slavery. By choosing to depict the architecture of the city, Schellinks perhaps obscures the harsh realities of this economic structure, and the colonial exploitation, including that of enslaved people, which would have been ever present in a port city. There is a tension, then, between the aesthetic beauty of the drawing and the submerged history of the location.