Mangroves - Captured By The Keen Eye Of A 17th Century Landscape Painter

Artists and scientists alike came across unfamiliar landscapes and strikingly strange fauna and flora when they embarked for the ‘colonies’. In the 17 ^th and 18 ^th centuries curiosity for the exotic developed into direct scientific observation, which is often still appreciated scientifically today, such as in biological taxonomy. Often observation, interpretation and reporting were geared towards functional aspects, a resourcist view on the environment in the wake of the colonial enterprise. This entailed that focus could be biased towards aspects of mercantile, political or strategic interest. Landscape vision is no exception for the possible biases. The Dutch painter Frans Post during his 7 year stay in the New World (Brazil) in the 17 ^th century was the first to depict mangroves as a very characteristic tropical vegetation, unfamiliar to Europeans, in spite of its limited interest in the context of colonial economy. He did this in the strong and developing tradition of Dutch landscape painting.