Lot Essay
An extract from The Foreign Office Register pasted on the inside cover of the album records that Lewis Ferriere was a clerk in the War Office from September 1810 until 7 May 1832 when he retired on a pension. As the inscription on the inside cover of the album indicates, he was 'on leave of absence on account of his health', sailing for the warmer climes of Brazil in January 1832 and returning to England in August 1834. His health apparently recovered and a diplomatic career followed with consular posts in Tunis in the 1840s and 1850s until his retirement in 1856.
He was accompanied to Brazil by his daughter Emily (who features in the album) and the Ferrieres appear to have been based in Rio de Janeiro. Through his sketches, we can follow his movements in Brazil which include a journey to the province of Minas Geraes, the mineral district north-west of Rio, where he stays at San Joa de Rey with a Mr. Herring of the 'G.M. [presumably General Mining] Association', sketching the Association's slaves at the Pacu Gold Mine at 'St Jozé' (now Tiradentes, south of Ouro Preto), Mr Herring and his servant Agostino and the 'St Francisco Church' (the baroque church São Francisco de Assis) at San Joa de Rey in November and December. In May and early June 1834 he goes on an excursion north to 'Boca do Mato' (presumably Beco do Mota now in the city of Diamintina north of Belo Horizonte), is back in Rio in early July and sails north on the Packet Lord Melville to Bahia (Salvador) and Pernambuco, the main port for English trade, before sailing home.
Ferriere's album of watercolours of Brazil in the early 1830s depict the country in the decade following independence and just a year after the abdication of the new emperor Don Pedro I. It is notable for the inclusion of a group of sketches in the Minas Gerais province in addition to the views in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Parahiba and Pernambuco. Minas Geraes ("general mines") as its name implies, refers to its great mineral wealth. Its vast reserves of gold provoked a gold rush in the eighteenth century and its capital Ouro Preto ("black gold") for a time became the de facto capital of the Portugese colony. The legacy of this period of mineral trading was a wealth of historical cities, with their abundance of baroque churches, scattered throughout the hills, and a high proportion of slaves from Portugese possessions in Africa brought into the district at the outbreak of the gold rush and tripling Brazil's African population in the eighteenth century. During Ferriere's visit the economy was still reliant on slave labour, the coffee monoculture from 1820 exploiting just under one and half million Africans. The slave trade would cease officially in 1850 and slave labour in Brazil continued into the 1880s.
As in the album of watercolours of Brazil in the early 1820s by Edmund Pink, an English trader (for whom see the sale in these Rooms, 15 July 1994, lots 39-43, and lots 51 and 92 in the present sale) Ferriere's album provides some of the earliest documentation of the forays of the English into the commercial districts in Brazil following the emancipation of trade in the colony in 1808
He was accompanied to Brazil by his daughter Emily (who features in the album) and the Ferrieres appear to have been based in Rio de Janeiro. Through his sketches, we can follow his movements in Brazil which include a journey to the province of Minas Geraes, the mineral district north-west of Rio, where he stays at San Joa de Rey with a Mr. Herring of the 'G.M. [presumably General Mining] Association', sketching the Association's slaves at the Pacu Gold Mine at 'St Jozé' (now Tiradentes, south of Ouro Preto), Mr Herring and his servant Agostino and the 'St Francisco Church' (the baroque church São Francisco de Assis) at San Joa de Rey in November and December. In May and early June 1834 he goes on an excursion north to 'Boca do Mato' (presumably Beco do Mota now in the city of Diamintina north of Belo Horizonte), is back in Rio in early July and sails north on the Packet Lord Melville to Bahia (Salvador) and Pernambuco, the main port for English trade, before sailing home.
Ferriere's album of watercolours of Brazil in the early 1830s depict the country in the decade following independence and just a year after the abdication of the new emperor Don Pedro I. It is notable for the inclusion of a group of sketches in the Minas Gerais province in addition to the views in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Parahiba and Pernambuco. Minas Geraes ("general mines") as its name implies, refers to its great mineral wealth. Its vast reserves of gold provoked a gold rush in the eighteenth century and its capital Ouro Preto ("black gold") for a time became the de facto capital of the Portugese colony. The legacy of this period of mineral trading was a wealth of historical cities, with their abundance of baroque churches, scattered throughout the hills, and a high proportion of slaves from Portugese possessions in Africa brought into the district at the outbreak of the gold rush and tripling Brazil's African population in the eighteenth century. During Ferriere's visit the economy was still reliant on slave labour, the coffee monoculture from 1820 exploiting just under one and half million Africans. The slave trade would cease officially in 1850 and slave labour in Brazil continued into the 1880s.
As in the album of watercolours of Brazil in the early 1820s by Edmund Pink, an English trader (for whom see the sale in these Rooms, 15 July 1994, lots 39-43, and lots 51 and 92 in the present sale) Ferriere's album provides some of the earliest documentation of the forays of the English into the commercial districts in Brazil following the emancipation of trade in the colony in 1808