In 1637, Frans Post sailed to Brazil, where the Dutch held the coast as a colony. There he made a pictorial record of the landscape, the people and the natural environment. Later, back in Haarlem, Post continued painting Brazilian landscapes: buyers paid considerable sums for his pictures. Yet these idyllic views never showed the oppression of the indigenous people, or the way the Dutch forced enslaved men, women and children to work on the plantations, condemning many to an early death.