Forêt Vierge du Brésil

Clarac travelled to Brazil in 1816 on the Hermione in the embassy of the Duc de Luxembourg and sketched in 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 bodycolour 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, probably a professional artist in Paris working up Clarac's popular composition, which was subsequently published in Hippolyte Taunay's Le Brésil (1822) and Chateaubriand's Voyage en Amérique (1836).


THIS LOT CAN BE VIEWED BY APPOINTMENT ONLY IN CHRISTIE'S RIO DE JANEIRO OFFICE