Frans Post, trained as a Dutch painter, lived in Brazil from 1637 to 1644 as part of the Brazilian governor Johan Maurtis of Nassau's entourage, as did another artist Albert Eckhout. Both followed Maurits to Brazil when he nominated to his post by the Dutch West India Company. Eckhout drew plants, animals, and indigenous peoples of Brazil--all of which were catagorized as natural history, whereas Post painted the actual territory under Dutch colonial control as well as a few buildings and battles. While in Brazil, Post painted eighteen paintings about the same size, 60 x 90 cm. Only seven are now known; elevent are still missing. Upon return to Europe, Post monolized the art market for views of the then-named West Indies, making more than two hundred works in thirty-five years based on his sketches and paintings from his seven years in Brazil.
In Post's "Le Fort Frederik Hendrik," previously in Louis the XIV's collection receieved as a diplomatic gift from Johan Maurits of Nassau and now in the collection of Recife's Institut Ricardo Brennand, three people dominate the center of the foreground in what is essentially a Low Countries landscape-style painting showing the aforementioned fort in the background, on the horizon. A black man and an ostensibly white man both turn their back to the viewer, while we see clearly the metisse or Amerindian woman's face and features from a frontal point of view.
About a hundred years later, copies of his paintings were made in gouache by the French amateur artist Thiery in 1765 for unknown reasons. Thiery's copy, while keeping the same title and maintains practically the same poses for the figures, takes large liberties in adding narrative to the picture. Instead of merely standing by a river, the black man has already started to cross the river while the white man and the woman are still on the bank on the near side of the viewer. Instead of a pipe, the black man holds in his hand a walking stick. The white man is relieving himself into the river, after which it seems he will cross it with the woman. The most ominous change here is that the only other human in this landscape is dead, hanging from the gallows at the side of the road leading to the fort. In Post's original, three other voyagers are in the distance and the empty gallows faces the ocean rather than the road--a threat of hanging rather than punishment fulfilled as imagined by Thiery.
Between the time of these two works, Post made 32 engravings for Kaspar van Baerle's book on Maurits of Nassau's eight years in Brazil, published in Latin in Amsterdam in 1647. This book gives a fundamental account of the Dutch colony of Brazil. Illustrating this book in 1645, immediately after his return to Europe, Post gives his previously mostly observational images a historical significance and narrative (such as, for example, the first meeting between the Dutch and the Amerindians). More strategically, Post labels these engravings with a legend as though they were topographical maps in the Dutch tradition.
In Post's "Le Fort Frederik Hendrik," previously in Louis the XIV's collection receieved as a diplomatic gift from Johan Maurits of Nassau and now in the collection of Recife's Institut Ricardo Brennand, three people dominate the center of the foreground in what is essentially a Low Countries landscape-style painting showing the aforementioned fort in the background, on the horizon. A black man and an ostensibly white man both turn their back to the viewer, while we see clearly the metisse or Amerindian woman's face and features from a frontal point of view.
About a hundred years later, copies of his paintings were made in gouache by the French amateur artist Thiery in 1765 for unknown reasons. Thiery's copy, while keeping the same title and maintains practically the same poses for the figures, takes large liberties in adding narrative to the picture. Instead of merely standing by a river, the black man has already started to cross the river while the white man and the woman are still on the bank on the near side of the viewer. Instead of a pipe, the black man holds in his hand a walking stick. The white man is relieving himself into the river, after which it seems he will cross it with the woman. The most ominous change here is that the only other human in this landscape is dead, hanging from the gallows at the side of the road leading to the fort. In Post's original, three other voyagers are in the distance and the empty gallows faces the ocean rather than the road--a threat of hanging rather than punishment fulfilled as imagined by Thiery.
Between the time of these two works, Post made 32 engravings for Kaspar van Baerle's book on Maurits of Nassau's eight years in Brazil, published in Latin in Amsterdam in 1647. This book gives a fundamental account of the Dutch colony of Brazil. Illustrating this book in 1645, immediately after his return to Europe, Post gives his previously mostly observational images a historical significance and narrative (such as, for example, the first meeting between the Dutch and the Amerindians). More strategically, Post labels these engravings with a legend as though they were topographical maps in the Dutch tradition.
posted by Open Mouth at 3:32 PM
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