Lot Essay
Jealously guarded by the Portuguese since it was taken by Cabral in 1502, Brazil remained a closed, little known and barely described colony until the early nineteenth century. The only significant paintings of Brazil to have emerged were the work of Prince Maurits of Nassau's artists dating to the brief period of Dutch supremacy at Olinda from the 1630s. The 1640 revolution in Portugal which placed the House of Bragança on the throne eventually ousted the Dutch from the northern coast and the colony settled under Portuguese rule until the next major change in its status with Napoleon's invasion of her mother country in 1807. Unable to resist, the Prince Regent (later Don João VI) fled to Brazil, arriving with his extravagant Lisbon caucus in Bahia in January 1808 and eventually securing asylum and his seat of Government in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil thereby became the only colony which became the seat of Government of its own mother country, opening its ports to foreign trade and permitting the export of most Brazilian produce under any flag.
Cultural as well as commercial relations began in earnest in May 1816 with the arrival in Rio de Janeiro of the magnificent French embassy headed by the Duc de Luxembourg, ambassador of the restored King Louis XVIII and brother of the widow of the 5th Duque de Cadaval who had accompanied the Prince Regent to Brazil and died on arrival in Bahia in 1807. The embassy brought with it a French artistic mission charged with the foundation of an Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and included the painters Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Jean-Baptiste Debret and the architect Grandjean de Montigny, in a large party of artists, architects, craftsmen and scientists, under the direction of Joachim Lebreton, the Secretary of the Institut des Beaux Arts of Paris.
The following year 'Dom Pedro, heir to the throne of Portugal and future emperor of Brazil, became engaged to the Austrian Archduchess Leopoldine ... daughter of the Habsburg Emperor of Austria, Friedrich I. Thanks to the Austrian Chancellor, Prince von Metternich, the young Princess brought with her to Brazil another formidable scientific mission. There were botanists, entomologists, artists and other naturalists ... the zoologist Johann Natterer, the mineralogist and botanist Johann Emanuel Pohl, and above all two Bavarians whom King Maximilian Joseph I of Bavaria had asked to be included in the team - the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix and the botanist Carl Friedrich Philip von Martius'. (J. Hemming, Amazon Frontier, London, 1995 (2nd ed.), p. 130).
The present two pictures record these first two diplomatic, artistic and scientific missions to reach Brazil in 1816-18. The first picture concentrates on the arrival of the Archduchess Leopoldine with her predominantly scientific Austrian and Bavarian mission and the artist has complemented his portrayal of the characters with a careful notation of their interests (ethnological, zoological and botanical) in their immediate surroundings.
The second picture concentrates on the activities of the French artistic mission (specifically the Duquesa de Cadaval's commission of a Palacío from either Montigny or Pézerat?) and probably represents the Duquesa herself (a French national) with her brother, the Duc de Luxembourg (leader of the French mission) and his accompanying artists. As though to underline this subject, the picture includes a portrait of the artist and is presented as a bravura sketch, distinguishing it from the companion picture in style as well as subject, and perhaps even suggesting the participation of the French artists in the Duc de Luxembourg's mission which preceded Pallière to Rio in 1816-17.
The French artist Arnaud Julien Pallière had joined Leopoldine's retinue on the Austria at Lisbon, and on arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1818 was commissioned by the King Dom João VI to paint landscapes of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Minas Geraes. Pallière would remain in Brazil until 1830, giving art classes at his house on the rua dos Borbones, and appointed professor of drawing at the Military Academy in Rio in 1822 where he produced the first lithographs to be published in Brazil. He married Agustina Elisa Julia Grandjean de Ferreira, the daughter of the French architect Grandjean de Montigny, collaborated with another French architect Pierre Jean Pézerat on imperial commissions and painted portraits of his family and members of the court as well as landscapes.
The two pictures are remarkable in presenting an exhaustive pictorial inventory of Brazil around the time of Leopoldine's arrival in 1818. Leopoldine herself is depicted in the first of the two paintings with her retinue in the courtyard of a palace in the Tijuca Hills. For the likeness, compare Pallière's portrait reproduced in J. Bogichi, Missão Artistíca Francesa e Pintores Viagentes, Fundacão França-Brasil, p. 106, and the Highcliffe sketch showing her in the same top hat reproduced in L. Edmondo, A Corte de D. João no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1940, p. 359. In the same picture, the group of three figures in the centre are probably Spix, Martius and Pohl, the zoologist and botanists in Leopoldine's retinue, and the architect is probably Grandjean de Montigny, the leading architect in the French mission, Pallière's future father-in-law, and one of the many architects charged by the Comte de Rio Secco to improve and construct the many residences in Rio and its environs needed by the royal family and its court. The same architect appears to be depicted in the second picture, preparing to lay a foundation stone for a villa in the countryside below Corcovado Mountain, and in the same picture an artist resembling Pallière is depicted sketching the scene (for Pallière's distinctive aquiline features, compare his self-portrait reproduced in the Enciclopedia del Arte en America, Biografias III, Buenos Aires, 1968, under the entry on Armand (sic) Julien Pallière). In addition to the imperial court and the imperial guard, the artist has surveyed Brazil's wider population, including a Brazilian Indian, resembling a Botocudo, as well as the imported African slaves and, in the second picture, mestizo Brazilian labourers.
The artist then adds the extraordinary natural environment of Brazil, paying equal attention to the flora and fauna, enumerated in the distinctive and lush hills of Rio de Janeiro, the palms and orange trees, the monkeys and the parrots.
Brazil's architecture, a central subject in both pictures, is represented in its past and present styles (the front of a baroque Jesuit Chapel which acts as a coulisse on the right of the first picture, the palace outbuildings in the same picture and the Portuguese colonial country villa in the second picture) with the future (in the neo-classical dialect introduced by the French) awaiting construction on the tabula rasa of the foreground of the second picture.
The expansion of urban Rio began with the arrival of the Portuguese court in 1808: 'Les travaux entrepris par les architectes dans la maison de campagne de Boa-Vista - bientôt appelée plus communément palais de São Cristovão - montraient que les Bragances entendaient y prolonger leur séjour ... Dans les environs de la capitale s'élevaient de plus en plus nombreuses des villas crépies à la chaux, à toit de tuiles relevé aux angles, avec des vérandas à piliers qui donnaient sur des jardins remplis de tubereuses et d'orangers. La ville s'était agrandie du côté de Catete et de Mataporcos, empiétant sur les terrains marécageux, paradis des hérons blancs et des crabes ... De 1808 à 1818 on construisit ainsi à Rio cent cinquante maisons de campagne et six cents demeures urbaines.' (D. Dalbian, Dom Pedro, Empereur du Brésil, Roi de Portugal (1798-1834), Paris, 1959, pp. 18-22).
Both Grandjean de Montigny and his compatriot Pézerat, as well as working on the Imperial Palaces, produced plans for the suburban villas, including the Duquesa de Cadaval's at Laranjeiras, which sprang up in the hills around Rio: 'As chácaras, que eram as menas importantes das propriedades rurais ... Eram das mais importantes, a do Conde de Gestas (na Tijuca); a do Brigadeiro Manuel Alvares de Fonseca Costa (no Morro de Santa Teresa, lado Rua Taylor); a da Duquesa de Cadaval (no Sitio das Laranjeiras, atual Embaixada Italiana) ... Pedro José Pezerat, arquiteto frances ... foi o autor de radical tranformacâo do imovel da Quinta da Boa Vista ... Adepto do néo-clássico, ele adotou esse estito no edifício, da mesme, que servia de recreio campestre à Corte, o que se deve à iniciativa de D. Joâo VI. E como essa primorosa construçao estava situada no hoje denominado Arraial da Boa-Vista, nada impossivel seria que alí fôsse o Petit Trianon brasileiro ... Ele é provavelamente, tambem, o autor do Palácio da Duquesa de Cadaval ... e que ficava no sítio das Laranjeiras, por quanto Luiz Joaquin dos Santos Marrocos, oficial de secretaria, e terrivel intrigante e maldizente das nossas cousas, refere, en sua carte de 21 de Setembro de 1816, que o arquiteto era francés que naquele tempo estava em plena atividade (Grandjean apenas começava a estoçar o projeto da Academia) e o fato da Duquesa ser natural da França, sobejas razes se tem para atribuir - Ihe mais esse trabalho' (A.M. de los Rios Filho, Grandjean de Montigny e a evoluçâo da arte brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1941, pp. 202-22).
Cultural as well as commercial relations began in earnest in May 1816 with the arrival in Rio de Janeiro of the magnificent French embassy headed by the Duc de Luxembourg, ambassador of the restored King Louis XVIII and brother of the widow of the 5th Duque de Cadaval who had accompanied the Prince Regent to Brazil and died on arrival in Bahia in 1807. The embassy brought with it a French artistic mission charged with the foundation of an Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and included the painters Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Jean-Baptiste Debret and the architect Grandjean de Montigny, in a large party of artists, architects, craftsmen and scientists, under the direction of Joachim Lebreton, the Secretary of the Institut des Beaux Arts of Paris.
The following year 'Dom Pedro, heir to the throne of Portugal and future emperor of Brazil, became engaged to the Austrian Archduchess Leopoldine ... daughter of the Habsburg Emperor of Austria, Friedrich I. Thanks to the Austrian Chancellor, Prince von Metternich, the young Princess brought with her to Brazil another formidable scientific mission. There were botanists, entomologists, artists and other naturalists ... the zoologist Johann Natterer, the mineralogist and botanist Johann Emanuel Pohl, and above all two Bavarians whom King Maximilian Joseph I of Bavaria had asked to be included in the team - the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix and the botanist Carl Friedrich Philip von Martius'. (J. Hemming, Amazon Frontier, London, 1995 (2nd ed.), p. 130).
The present two pictures record these first two diplomatic, artistic and scientific missions to reach Brazil in 1816-18. The first picture concentrates on the arrival of the Archduchess Leopoldine with her predominantly scientific Austrian and Bavarian mission and the artist has complemented his portrayal of the characters with a careful notation of their interests (ethnological, zoological and botanical) in their immediate surroundings.
The second picture concentrates on the activities of the French artistic mission (specifically the Duquesa de Cadaval's commission of a Palacío from either Montigny or Pézerat?) and probably represents the Duquesa herself (a French national) with her brother, the Duc de Luxembourg (leader of the French mission) and his accompanying artists. As though to underline this subject, the picture includes a portrait of the artist and is presented as a bravura sketch, distinguishing it from the companion picture in style as well as subject, and perhaps even suggesting the participation of the French artists in the Duc de Luxembourg's mission which preceded Pallière to Rio in 1816-17.
The French artist Arnaud Julien Pallière had joined Leopoldine's retinue on the Austria at Lisbon, and on arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1818 was commissioned by the King Dom João VI to paint landscapes of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Minas Geraes. Pallière would remain in Brazil until 1830, giving art classes at his house on the rua dos Borbones, and appointed professor of drawing at the Military Academy in Rio in 1822 where he produced the first lithographs to be published in Brazil. He married Agustina Elisa Julia Grandjean de Ferreira, the daughter of the French architect Grandjean de Montigny, collaborated with another French architect Pierre Jean Pézerat on imperial commissions and painted portraits of his family and members of the court as well as landscapes.
The two pictures are remarkable in presenting an exhaustive pictorial inventory of Brazil around the time of Leopoldine's arrival in 1818. Leopoldine herself is depicted in the first of the two paintings with her retinue in the courtyard of a palace in the Tijuca Hills. For the likeness, compare Pallière's portrait reproduced in J. Bogichi, Missão Artistíca Francesa e Pintores Viagentes, Fundacão França-Brasil, p. 106, and the Highcliffe sketch showing her in the same top hat reproduced in L. Edmondo, A Corte de D. João no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1940, p. 359. In the same picture, the group of three figures in the centre are probably Spix, Martius and Pohl, the zoologist and botanists in Leopoldine's retinue, and the architect is probably Grandjean de Montigny, the leading architect in the French mission, Pallière's future father-in-law, and one of the many architects charged by the Comte de Rio Secco to improve and construct the many residences in Rio and its environs needed by the royal family and its court. The same architect appears to be depicted in the second picture, preparing to lay a foundation stone for a villa in the countryside below Corcovado Mountain, and in the same picture an artist resembling Pallière is depicted sketching the scene (for Pallière's distinctive aquiline features, compare his self-portrait reproduced in the Enciclopedia del Arte en America, Biografias III, Buenos Aires, 1968, under the entry on Armand (sic) Julien Pallière). In addition to the imperial court and the imperial guard, the artist has surveyed Brazil's wider population, including a Brazilian Indian, resembling a Botocudo, as well as the imported African slaves and, in the second picture, mestizo Brazilian labourers.
The artist then adds the extraordinary natural environment of Brazil, paying equal attention to the flora and fauna, enumerated in the distinctive and lush hills of Rio de Janeiro, the palms and orange trees, the monkeys and the parrots.
Brazil's architecture, a central subject in both pictures, is represented in its past and present styles (the front of a baroque Jesuit Chapel which acts as a coulisse on the right of the first picture, the palace outbuildings in the same picture and the Portuguese colonial country villa in the second picture) with the future (in the neo-classical dialect introduced by the French) awaiting construction on the tabula rasa of the foreground of the second picture.
The expansion of urban Rio began with the arrival of the Portuguese court in 1808: 'Les travaux entrepris par les architectes dans la maison de campagne de Boa-Vista - bientôt appelée plus communément palais de São Cristovão - montraient que les Bragances entendaient y prolonger leur séjour ... Dans les environs de la capitale s'élevaient de plus en plus nombreuses des villas crépies à la chaux, à toit de tuiles relevé aux angles, avec des vérandas à piliers qui donnaient sur des jardins remplis de tubereuses et d'orangers. La ville s'était agrandie du côté de Catete et de Mataporcos, empiétant sur les terrains marécageux, paradis des hérons blancs et des crabes ... De 1808 à 1818 on construisit ainsi à Rio cent cinquante maisons de campagne et six cents demeures urbaines.' (D. Dalbian, Dom Pedro, Empereur du Brésil, Roi de Portugal (1798-1834), Paris, 1959, pp. 18-22).
Both Grandjean de Montigny and his compatriot Pézerat, as well as working on the Imperial Palaces, produced plans for the suburban villas, including the Duquesa de Cadaval's at Laranjeiras, which sprang up in the hills around Rio: 'As chácaras, que eram as menas importantes das propriedades rurais ... Eram das mais importantes, a do Conde de Gestas (na Tijuca); a do Brigadeiro Manuel Alvares de Fonseca Costa (no Morro de Santa Teresa, lado Rua Taylor); a da Duquesa de Cadaval (no Sitio das Laranjeiras, atual Embaixada Italiana) ... Pedro José Pezerat, arquiteto frances ... foi o autor de radical tranformacâo do imovel da Quinta da Boa Vista ... Adepto do néo-clássico, ele adotou esse estito no edifício, da mesme, que servia de recreio campestre à Corte, o que se deve à iniciativa de D. Joâo VI. E como essa primorosa construçao estava situada no hoje denominado Arraial da Boa-Vista, nada impossivel seria que alí fôsse o Petit Trianon brasileiro ... Ele é provavelamente, tambem, o autor do Palácio da Duquesa de Cadaval ... e que ficava no sítio das Laranjeiras, por quanto Luiz Joaquin dos Santos Marrocos, oficial de secretaria, e terrivel intrigante e maldizente das nossas cousas, refere, en sua carte de 21 de Setembro de 1816, que o arquiteto era francés que naquele tempo estava em plena atividade (Grandjean apenas começava a estoçar o projeto da Academia) e o fato da Duquesa ser natural da França, sobejas razes se tem para atribuir - Ihe mais esse trabalho' (A.M. de los Rios Filho, Grandjean de Montigny e a evoluçâo da arte brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1941, pp. 202-22).