Willem de Rooij - Dirk Valkenburg

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.

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.