In the summer of 1911, Belgium’s Ministry of Colonies sent two postimpressionist artists to Matadi, a port city on the Atlantic coast of what was then the Belgian Congo.

The artists, Alfred Bastien and Paul Mathieu, were to capture images of the colony’s landscape and people for a painting to be displayed at the 1913 Ghent World Fair. Taking photos and making sketches, they documented inhumane working conditions, people in chains and impoverished villages under a brutal imperial regime.

But the resulting painting, “The Congo Panorama,” showed none of that. The artists whitewashed the violence and instead presented a stunning landscape in soothing pastels, with Congolese villagers peacefully enjoying the benefits of colonial rule. Some 370 feet in length, the painting went on public display in a circular building that surrounded visitors with the landscape, an immersive experience that seemed to transport them to idyllic Central Africa.

Now, a new exhibition — “The Congo Panorama 1913: Colonial Illusion Exposed” at the Africa Museum in Tervuren, a Brussels suburb — aims to get past the propaganda and highlight both the true oppressive conditions and the efforts to sell a positive idea of colonialism to the Belgian public.

“We’re using this as a window on colonization, a window on Congo and Belgium at that time,” said Maarten Couttenier, one of three curators of the show, which runs through Sept. 27. The panorama, he said, is “just one example of the broader colonial propaganda, which was everywhere: in museums, children’s games, monuments, schoolbooks.”

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