The Dutch Factory in Hooghly-Chinsurah, Bengal

The painter put a label into the picture itself. On a stone pedestal at the lower right, an inscription calls the scene a view of the lodge of the Dutch East India Company, the VOC,, or head office, in Bengal, at Hooghly, and gives the year 1665 and Schuylenburgh's name. Above it hangs a coat of arms whose fields now look dark green, though the museum notes they were originally blue. Behind, the trading post spreads out in a walled square with neat gardens inside, the Dutch flag flying at one corner and ships on the river. The director visits an Indian ruler, elephants and horses pass, and among the crowds enslaved people are at work. In the 17th century Bengal was one of the places where the VOC and its employees bought the most people, shipping them to its other posts around the Indian Ocean.