Post, Frans (1612-1680)
Brazilian Landscape
1656
Oil on panel, 41.6 x 55.9 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
This imagined landscape depicts enslaved Africans resting and dancing amid baskets of fruit on a hill above a broad plain of coastal swamp, surrounded by the lush vegetation of colonial Brazil. At the left stands a thatched rectangular structure with earthen walls and a large veranda, typical of Brazilian slave dwellings of the period. In the foreground vegetation, Post adds a red bird, while a Dutch ship sits in the harbor. From 1630 to 1654, the state-run Dutch West India Company controlled eastern Brazil and its lucrative sugar production. From 1636 the company began transporting enslaved Africans from Guinea and then Angola to Brazil, where they were put to work on the sugar plantations. Post spent eight years in Brazil, brought there to document its landscape, native fauna, and animals by Johan Maurits (1604–1678), the Dutch colonial governor of Brazil from 1636 to 1644. Post also recorded the enslaved laborers at leisure and at work, though images like this offered highly idealized and harmonious views of life under slavery and Dutch rule. After he returned to Holland in 1644, Post spent the remainder of his career producing painted versions of this distant, foreign world. In an Art and Curiosity Cabinet, a painting like this would often be placed next to a table with goods brought back from the Americas. (WA)
See also:
• Brasil