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| Gillis Peeters - View of Recife and its Port -1639 |
Artists of the generation before the Peeters brothers had already produced naval scenes of the Dutch Atlantic squadron. Attack on Salvador in J6i4 {Fig.4) is attributed to Andries van Eertvelt and may depict the expedition against Bahia, commanded by Admiral Jacob Willekens, which arrived there in May 1624. The scene corresponds to an illustration in a book by Levin us Hulsius published in 1629. It is possible that View of Recife and its Port was also painted from an original engraving, as frequently happened during this period.
Gillis Peeters was probably one of the six painters who were in Brazil for a time during the administration of Maurice of Nassau, and he may have done some preliminary sketches there. But the general conception of his works, with some reservations in the case of View of Recife, does not show much evidence of painting from nature. He may have even provided sketches for his brother Bonaventura, who also painted landscapes of the Dutch Atlantic dominions but is not known to have visited Brazil.
The artistic and scientific legacy brought back by Maurice of Nassau in 1644 also includes views of the Brazilian landscape by Frans Post, and drawings and paintings from nature by Albert Eckhout, which both contributed to informing Europeans about the scenery, peoples, flora and fauna of Brazil.