Looking at Landscape: The Colonial Gaze
William Hodges (1744-1797)
There are several artists whose work we’re going to explore through the lens of the colonial gaze, taking us across lands and peoples colonised primarily by the British. Firstly: William Hodges. I first came across Hodges as an acquaintance of Thomas Jones who he met whilst studying under renowned master of the romantic landscape, Richard Wilson. I was inexplicably drawn to Hodges’ ethereal, tropical landscapes; a stark contrast of subject compared to the euro-centric romanticism of the period. But beyond the pacific peaks and turquoise skies, Hodges’ landscapes mask something darker, hidden in the shadows of the palm trees, in the crevasses of the mountains, and under the deceptively calm oceans.
Hodge’s style echoes the pioneering French landscapes that emerged in the late seventeenth century, and could almost be considered a precursor to the Hudson River School style. The pastel palette of dreamy pinks and tropical blues that can be found across Hodges’ expedition oeuvre provides the viewer with an image of a far-off world, an idealised vision of exotic paradise. His landscapes are stunning and intriguing even to the oversaturated contemporary western viewer, who is bombarded by instagrammable holiday destinations – so now imagine how these landscapes would have been received by an ordinary person in the eighteenth century. Hodges was in a position of unthinkable power, responsible for creating the ‘other’ for people who would never see it.
His paintings that feature depictions of people play into western civilization’s sentimental idea of the “noble savage”, as quoted in The New Statesman. Prior to the invention of the camera in the mid-nineteenth century, artists were employed on expeditions and voyages to record a visual reference of the landscape, flora and fauna, and people. On the second Cook expedition, Hodges did just this. His intricate work can be considered as a scientific and historical reference of the topography and anthropology of little-known lands. However, it must also be considered as the embodiment of the ‘colonial gaze’.
William Hodges curated an idealised, flawless, exotic, observation of the lands he came across in the Pacific. In fact, Hodges was so obsessed with idealising the Pacific landscape for a European audience that he placed white, western figures into these landscapes. This can be seen in ‘A View taken in the bay of Oaite Peha [Vaitepiha] Otaheite [Tahiti]’ (‘Tahiti Revisited’)’. It feels like a Renaissance painting in an imagined land. This white projection is also present in the painting ‘[A] view of Maitavie Bay, [in the island of] Otaheite [Tahiti]‘. Tahitian figures are more present here, but the composition centres around a white woman and child (a direct visual reference to the Virgin and Child), and a toga-clad male figure, who again echoes the classicism that inspired European Renaissance painting.
John Glover (1767 – 1849)
His best-known work was produced in Lutruwita, which offered a more accurate perspective on various different flora and fauna than previously recorded. His style is illustrative, almost cartoonish, and his choice of where to include detail is telling. ‘Natives on the Ouse River: Van Diemen’s Land’ is one of his best-known paintings, and has been criticised as portraying an ‘Antipodean arcadia’, a paradise-like presentation of a land that neglects the devastation caused by European colonisation. Notably, the painting was completed after the Black War which would have still been raging when Glover arrived in Australia. The Black War was a period of unspeakable violence between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians from the mid-1820s. During this genocide, the Aboriginal population was decimated: the original population of several thousand Aboriginal Tasmanians was reduced to just 46 people by 1847.
Glover’s choice to depict around 23 Aboriginal people in his painting is an uncomfortable decision. Hideously, this would have represented a significant proportion of the population at this time. The figures are lacking in any physical, individual, and cultural detail, and are depicted as stick figures and silhouettes, a great contrast to the painstakingly observed forms of trees, leaves, and topography. This theme is echoed in another painting, ‘Mount Wellington and Hobart town from Kangaroo Point‘. Here, around 33 Aboriginal people are brought to the foreground, positioned as features of the natural landscape rather than as sitters. This is reflected in the title, which neglects to mention the presence of the group, and chooses to focus on the painting as a landscape of the nearby town and mountain.
Glover’s choice to paint ‘landscapes of people’ is typical of the colonial gaze. Here, Indigenous human beings are included as landscape features, rather than as subjects in themselves, typifying the genocidal views of European colonists. Glover’s paintings are not landscapes: they are weapons used to obliterate the presence and agency of Aboriginal populations, and to omit the lens of oppression and genocide is a misunderstanding of the very world that he was capturing.
Thomas Daniell (1749 – 1840) and William Daniell (1769–1837)
As British colonialism spread across the globe, so too did artists seeking to capture the form of far-off lands. Uncle and nephew partnership, Thomas and William Daniell, travelled around India from 1786 to 1793 with the intention of capturing the landscape and architecture of the subcontinent for viewers in Britain (the word ‘capturing’ is not accidental – like the work of Hodges and Glover, the deeply colonial perspective imprisoned the landscape as a subject of the colonial gaze).
Upon their return from India, the Daniells set about turning their sketches and observations into a series of aquatints called ‘Oriental Scenery’, which saw huge commercial success. Overall, the paintings were heralded as accurate and ‘representative’ of India. However, we must again turn to the wider context of India during that period, to understand the bucolic, selective, and amnesic serenity of the landscapes.
Despite not becoming a formal British colony until 1857, the British had been establishing increasing control through the East India Company. The East India Company was not just a trading body – it was supported by its very own private army, which exploited local resources and led to increased social and political control.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the Company had fought more than ten individual wars as part of the power struggle between Indian rulers and British forces. Although war was not raging when the Daniells arrived in 1786, they would have almost certainly witnessed the carnage caused by the First and Second Anglo-Mysore Wars; what’s more, they were actually travelling in Mysore as the Third Anglo-Mysore War was coming to an end.
Nevertheless, their landscapes of Mysore and beyond give no indication of a country that had been fighting, almost continually since 1686, to fend off the ever-encroaching British presence. ‘Ousoor, in the Mysore’, 1792, shows the Company’s Indian soldiers (known as Sepoys) sporting the distinctive red jackets of the British Army, resting by a temple. Only months earlier, this had been the setting of some of the most violent conflicts of the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Some plates, like ‘Shiva Temple, Elephanta Island’ show partially ruined temples, reflecting perhaps the ruins of an ancient empire, foreshadowing the foundations of what was to become the jewel in the crown of the British empire.
The colonial gaze in the work of Thomas and William Daniell can be reduced to the omission of conflict. The colonial gaze portrays peaceful landscapes in places where there would have been death and destruction. It makes local people into passive bystanders within a landscape, used as an artistic means of contextualising the scenery. People are not portrayed as resistant, and they are given no ownership of their land. Here, the colonial gaze is a selective and reductive use of propaganda.
Conclusion
The lens through which the artist looks, choosing how and why to depict these far away lands, reveals the euro-centric intention to present cultures simply as products of European exploration. But these artworks also represent something even more sinister. These paintings act as a way of projecting whiteness, ownership, and power onto the very land and cultures which they capture. The colonial gaze over the colonial landscape leaves the modern viewer with a dangerous lens through which to see the past. These are not pictures of paradise or utopia: they omit the genocidal reality of colonialism, and reinforce racialised stereotypes and mistruths that have seeped into the fabric of our society today. A landscape is not just a scene, but a story – one shaped by power, ownership, and the colonial gaze.