Overview

Amsterdam painter Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) produced some of the earliest depictions of Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese sugar plantations – idealized images that conceal the violence of colonialism. He also painted ornate hunting still lifes and portraits of patrons whose wealth derived from colonial trade and slavery. Through this very variety of genres, Valkenburg’s paintings demonstrate the workings of the ‘white gaze’. Edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black, this volume joins the first catalogue raisonné of Valkenburg’s work – developed in collaboration with the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague – and a critical reader of newly commissioned essays by leading international scholars. Uniting voices from art history, anthropology, postcolonial and queer studies across Europe and the Americas, it contextualizes Valkenburg’s oeuvre through interdisciplinary and transcultural dialogue. Conceived as a pendant to De Rooij’s installation Valkenburg at the Centraal Museum Utrecht (2025), the book and exhibition together invite reflection on how eighteenth-century Dutch elites used visual culture to normalize colonial ideology.

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Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) creates temporary installations that explore the politics of representation across various media. Appropriation and collaboration are central to his artistic method, and his projects have stimulated new research in art history and ethnography. In 2000 De Rooij won the Bâloise Art Prize, and he was nominated for the Hugo Boss Award in 2004 and the Vincent Award in 2014. He was a Robert Fulton Fellow at Harvard University in 2004 and a DAAD fellow in Berlin in 2006. He represented the Netherlands at the 2005 Venice Biennale with Jeroen de Rijke, his collaborative partner from 1994-2006. Recent solo exhibitions took place at Portikus Frankfurt (2021), LAXart, Los Angeles (2019), IMA Brisbane (2017) and Consortium, Dijon (2015). De Rooij has taught and lectured extensively since 1998. He is Professor of Fine Art at the Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main since 2006, and advisor at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam since 2015. In 2016 he co-founded BPA// Berlin program for artists, and became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. De Rooij’s works can be found in the collections of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MUMOK, Vienna; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MOCA, Los Angeles and MOMA, New York. Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636-1695), Willem de Rooij and Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer (eds.), Volume 2 from Intolerance, published for an exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Dusseldorf (Feymedia Verlagsgesellschaft) 2010. Karwan Fatah-Black (b. 1981) is lecturer in social and economic history at Leiden University and senior researcher at the Royal Dutch Institute of South-East Asia and Caribbean Studies. He is a scholar of Dutch colonial history specialized in the Atlantic world and slavery. He is a prolific author and participant in public debates on the future of the colonial past.

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