Forêt Vièrge du Brésil

Clarac travelled to Brazil in 1816 on the Hermione in the embassy of the Duc de Luxembourg and sketched Rio de Janeiro. A visit to the Rio Bonito region inspired the present subject which Clarac exhibited at the Paris Salon (sepia watercolour) in 1819. The subject was popular and was engraved by Claude Francois Fortier in 1822. There is another bodycolor version (61 x 81.6cm.) of the subject, attributed to Clarac, in the collection of Sergio Sahione Fadel, Rio de Janeiro. This latter, along with the marginally smaller Fortier engraving and a picture of similar size, were exhibited in Sao Paulo in 2000 (see the exhibition catalogue O Olhar Distante, pp. 144-45). The present work appears to be by the same hand as the Fadel bodycolour, quite possibly a professional Paris artist working up Clarac's popular composition which was published in Hippolyte Taunay's Le Brésil (1822) and Chateaubriand's Voyage en Amérique (1836).