Arcadian Landscape 1628 - 1675

Curator: Editor: Here we have Gaspard Dughet’s "Arcadian Landscape," painted sometime between 1628 and 1675. The oil on canvas evokes a really serene atmosphere to me. How do you interpret this work? Curator: Beyond the surface beauty, I see a painting deeply embedded in its time, reflecting ideas about power, class, and the very control of nature. What kind of dialogue do you think that Dughet tried to open with that specific kind of landscape? Editor: I hadn't thought of that! The word "Arcadian" makes me think of an idealized pastoral scene, not power dynamics. What were the landscapes during this time in Europe being used for? Curator: The "Arcadian Landscape" is far from innocent. It speaks to the landowners' manipulation of resources. Nature isn’t wild; it’s composed. Controlled. Where are the ordinary people who lived and toiled in landscapes like this? How might a peasant at the time have perceived this work? Editor: Now that you mention it, that feeling of serenity feels... staged. It is hard to view something made in a colonial period, where landscapes are constantly controlled, with any sort of unbiased innocence. It's also interesting that these landscapes very often ignore what may have been seen as inconvenient or "ugly" details of a real-world version. Curator: Exactly! This absence is an absence that speaks volumes, isn't it? Consider, too, how landscape painting developed alongside colonialism; this control is very similar to other systems used to repress. By omitting the stories of exploited labour or extracted resources, Dughet participates, whether consciously or not, in a larger act of erasure. Editor: I’ll never be able to look at landscape paintings the same way again. I’m always trying to figure out what those missing narratives are. Curator: And by doing that, you give the landscape new possibilities.