Frans Post, Eertwelt and Others

The relationship with nature demonstrated by Marggraf, Post and Eckhout shows a purely physical or scientific observation, arguably more in harmony with the modem view. Guided by the new approach of the natural sciences which had developed without moral preoccupations and in opposition to religious belief, the way towards knowledge of nature was through the senses.

Andires Van Eertwelt - Attack on Salvador - 1624

Confidence in the aesthetic experience marks the new attitude of these artists, who drew on their observation of nature to develop an art based on visible phenomena, exploring the projections of light and shadow and the reverberations of colour.

Frans Post - Plantation House and Sugar Mill after 1660

Frans Post, official government painter in the Dutch West India Company in Brazil, has left the most notable contribution to landscape painting, full of topographical interest. Brought up in the landscape tradition of Dutch painting, his Brazilian work is characterised in general terms by the depiction of a foreground opening onto a vast plain, with trees dotted to right and left and a road or a winding river running diagonally across and joining the foreground to the horizon one third of the way up the picture. Meticulous observation of tropical nature reveals considerable detail in the foreground.

The painter took back memories of the Brazilian landscape to Europe. On his return to Holland, Post began to feed a public hungry for exotic views and produced a large number of paintings in the documentary style, which could be classified as "Brazilian scenes". Marine views, which had been a constant theme among previous painters, gave place to the landscapes of the outback, where Post imagines the land as flooded like Holland. The great empty plains are filled with a variety of activities, houses occupied by the black slaves who worked the sugar plantations, sugar mills, the mansion of the plantation owners {Fig.5). In the same way, the buildings of the Carmelites and the Franciscans are imposed on the landscape, which shows the facade of a cathedral or little chapels with porches. Post even invests the architecture with the contemporary European predilection for ruins, and shows buildings beaten down by the sun and by the tropical vegetation. He is careful in his depiction of plants, animals and architectural features, for which he could have recourse to his sketches done in Brazil. In the artificial landscape painted after his return to Holland, the artist shows vegetation in the foreground, with details of exotic flora and fauna disproportionately amplified, allowing the outback to lose itself in the distance, where the attention is focused by every possible means towards the light {Fig.6). Whilst maintaining the horizontal and vertical planes, he makes nature more abundant and increases the number of buildings. The painter thus constructs the landscape, bringing together features which are not necessarily mutually coherent. It has nothing in common with a strictly topographical view. It is an ideal landscape.

Frans Post - Plantation House and Sugar Mill after 1660

Paradoxically, the Brazilian scenes painted by Post in Holland became more and more sharp, with every detail more visible in the limpid atmosphere of the Flemish tradition of precision. Eric Larsen, who has made a study of Post's work, is right in saying that "mannerism involves the exaggeration of features by forgetting them".

Niels Aagard Lytzen
Tapuia Man - 1876

Among the most influential works of the Dutch in Brazil are the four pairs of figures painted by Albert Eckhout on large panels. Their size and nobility make them appear naturalist portraits. The illusion of reality, which is simulated through the observation of natural details in accordance with the conception of the physical world peculiar to Dutch painting, should not deceive us. The positioning of the figures follows convention, and the series springs from an intellectual conception influenced by poetical allegories. The series consists of four pairs: Tupi man and woman; Tarairiu (Tapuia) man and woman; Mameluca woman and Mulatto man; African woman and African man, as well as a scene of activity entitled Tapuia Dance. They were presented by Maurice of Nassau to the King of Denmark and have been kept in the National Museum in Copenhagen since the 17th century. Besides the careful ethnographic observation, the pictures contain a wealth of exuberant botanical and zoological detail.

Niels Aagard Lytzen
Tapuia Woman - 1876

The series influenced European attitudes profoundly, and drew the attention of other artists and scientists. There are other versions of these figures by contemporaries of Eckhout, such as Zacharias Wagener, Schmalkalden, Locke and Nieuhof, all of whom were in some way linked to the project of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil. The versions shown in this exhibition are copies commissioned by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil in the 19th century, after he had been strongly impressed by Eckhout's original panels. These smaller copies are the work of Niels Aagard Lytzen (Figs. 7 and 8) and belong to the Historical and Geographical Institute of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.

Lytzen was faithful to the characteristics of the original conception. His work shows that the couples correspond in certain ways to different stages of civilization and that the carefully chosen details are attributes of the figures and help to give meaning to the whole. The Tapuias, naked and barbarous, are shown in the context of a natural and untouched landscape. The sense of animal instinct is suggested by the presence of the dog slaking its thirst, and the group life seen in the background, behind the woman who is carrying human meat in a basket, in an allusion to cannibalism. The couple from the Tupinambd tribe, who occupied the coastal region of Brazil, are more cultured and are identified with hunting, fishing and agriculture. The Mameluca is framed by the attractions of nature. Surrounded by various colours, she evokes the perfume of flowers, the taste of fruit, the touch of satin on the body. A little guinea pig appropriately completes the sensuality of the scene.

In accord with 17th century thinking, the drawings of nature made by the Dutch artists in Brazil, which form some of the first scientific documents on Brazilian nature, lend themselves to decorative purposes, being later used for the ornamental hangings known as Teinture des Indes and other wall hangings. A good example is the Theatrum Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae, which contains a series of drawings of animals and plants, attributed to Eckhout and Georg  Marggraf. These drawings served as the basis for the  Indias tapestry cartoons.