SLAVERY & THE INVENTION OF DUTCH ART

164pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Duke University Press, Durham, 2025

ISBN: 9781478031321

An examination of the fundamental role of the transatlantic slave trade in the production and evolution of seventeenth-century Dutch art.

“The scholarly audience and the museum world have been waiting for a book like this for a long time. Given the shifting perspective in Old World heritage institutions on the place of slavery, racialization, and empire, there is a great need for Caroline Fowler’s thorough theorization and reflection. An impressive book.” Karwan Fatah-Black, author of White Lies and Black Markets: Evading Metropolitan Authority in Colonial Suriname, 1650–1800

“In this passionate and imaginative book Caroline Fowler offers important new accounts of canonical artists from the portraiture of Rembrandt to the interior scenes of Gerard ter Borch, Frans van Mieris, and Vermeer to the iconoclastic interiors of Pieter Jansz. Saenredam. Brilliant and original.”Joseph Koerner, author of, Bosch and Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life

Caroline Fowler is Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Institute. She is the author of The Art of Paper: From the Holy Land to the Americas and Drawing and the Senses: An Early Modern History.