Newfoundland Imagined: European Visions in the 1600s

In the late 1600s, Dutch artist Gerard van Edema captured Newfoundland in two sweeping painted landscapes. These may be the first paintings of a North American place created by a European artist who had actually visited the continent. Painted for wealthy patrons back in England, his images reflect the ideals and desires of those who commissioned them: a land imagined as vast, resource-rich, and nearly empty of Indigenous Peoples.

Shown alongside drawings and artifacts from the same era, these works reveal how power and perspective shaped European concepts of Newfoundland—and invite us to ask whose stories were told, and whose were left out.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Jayne and Jonathan Hale.