Lagoon of the Guayaquil, South America

In 1857, Louis Rémy Mignot departed for South America alongside acclaimed painter Frederic Edwin Church, and the two artists would stay for four months. Enamored with the tropical scenery that he saw, Ecuador, in particular, became Mignot's most commonly painted subject. This expedition shaped Mignot's artistic vision, causing a contemporary critic to write: "the really distinctive quality of his genius appears to us to have been developed by his visit to South America..., which gave rise to some of his finest and most original productions, and seems to have had a permanent influence in defining and developing his style." (as quoted in K.W. Manthorne, J.W. Coffey, The Landscapes of Louis Rémy Mignot: A Southern Painter Abroad, exhibition catalogue, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1996, p. 69)

The present work likely depicts Guayaquil—a lush area with tropical flora located along Ecuador's Guayas River—which is today the country's second largest city. It is possible that the present work was part of Mignot's London exhibition debut, shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1863. As in the present work, his early South American landscapes allocate much of the composition to the majestic sky, and "the reflective surface of the water repeats the configurations in a way that merges the earth with the heavens." (The Landscapes of Louis Rémy Mignot: A Southern Painter Abroad, p. 101) Other works of this subject are in the collections of the Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.