FRANS POST
Dutch, 1612-1680
Brazilian Landscape,
1665
Oil on canvas.
18 3/4 x 23 3/8 in. (48 x 59 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Louis V. Keeler, Class of 1911. 59.93
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In the seventeenth century, the newly independent nation of the Netherlands
created a far-flung network of trading posts and settlements, from Nieuw
Amsterdam (now New York) to Brazil, western Africa, India, and Indonesia.
One of the most carefully documented of these colonies was the short-lived
expedition to Brazil from 1637 to 1644, when the Dutch, under the leadership
of Prince Maurits of Nassau, attempted to establish a thriving sugar industry,
as well as a capital city. Prince Johan Maurits brought with him a group
of artists, map makers, and scientists to record this new world. |
Frans Post, the artist who executed this painting, went to Brazil
and saw these exotic landscapes firsthand; this work, like most of his paintings,
was executed after he returned to his native Haarlem. His simple, almost
naive organization of the recession into the background, ending in distant
blue, and the generalized stick figures are typical of him. He often added
armadillos, tapirs, anteaters, and other such exotic animals (see the lower
left corner of this painting), as a kind of "signature;" he even
would include an armadillo, for example, in a traditional subject from the
Old Testament. This particular view of the various buildings and slaves
of a sugar plantation was probably not meant to document a specific place
but rather to suggest a typical establishment of this kind. |
