Artists in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Brazil

by

Rebecca Brienen

• LAST MODIFIED: 19 February 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0184

Introduction

The drawings and paintings created in the colony of Dutch Brazil (1630–1654) represent the global reach of Dutch-sponsored artistic production in the seventeenth century. Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (b. 1604–d. 1679) was a German count, a cousin of Dutch Stadholder Frederick Hendrick, and Dutch Brazil’s only colonial governor. He arrived in northeastern Brazil (present-day Recife) in 1637; by 1640 his retinue likely included up to three professional painters from the Netherlands: Frans Post (b. 1612–d. 1680) of Haarlem, Albert Eckhout (b. c. 1607–d. c. 1666) of Groningen, and the little-known Utrecht artist Abraham Willaerts (b. c. 1613–d. 1669). They were joined in Brazil by Dutch physician Willem Piso (b. 1611–d. 1678) and German natural historian Georg Marggrafe (b. 1610–d. 1644). During their time in Brazil, these men studied the human population, the plants and animals, the topography, and even the constellations of the South American colony. Together, they created the first written and visual record by Europeans of their interaction with Brazil. Post is known for his landscapes of Brazil, some produced in situ, and others that became the staple of his post-Brazilian career. Topographical drawings and a series of natural history studies may also be attributed to the artist. Engravings after his designs also appeared in Dutch humanist Caspar Barlaeus’s 1647 history of Dutch Brazil, Rerum per octennium in Brasilia. Eckhout’s Brazilian oeuvre includes life-sized images, often called ethnographic portraits, of the men and women of the colony (excluding Europeans); paintings of fruits and vegetables grown in Brazil; and a large corpus of drawings and oil studies on paper. Many of the latter were used for woodcuts in Marggrafe and Piso’s 1648 Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. Later European work by Eckhout included tapestry cartoons and Brazilian-inspired ceiling paintings. Willaerts was a marine specialist whose oeuvre includes a recently identified View of Recife from 1640. While Piso was not artistically inclined, Marggrave created maps, and multiple watercolors of Brazilian flora and fauna have also been attributed to him. The German quartermaster Zacharias Wagener was not part of the governor’s official retinue, nor was he a trained artist. Nonetheless, his Thierbuch copied and interpreted works by the colony’s official artists. Piso, Marggrafe, Eckhout, Post, and possibly Willaerts were not leading artists or scientists in the Dutch Republic when they were chosen for this remarkable experience. They had training, but more importantly, they were young, unwed, and likely interested in traveling to the New World as a means of making a name for themselves.

General Overviews of Artists in Dutch Brazil

The 1979 exhibition, Zo wijd de wereld strekt (As far as the world extends), at the Mauritshuis in The Hague marked the three hundredth anniversary of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen’s death. It resulted in two key publications, van den Boogaart and Duparc 1979, a catalogue that serves as a popular introduction to Dutch Brazil, and van den Boogaart, et al. 1979, an important volume of scholarly essays that lays the groundwork for much further research on the colony and Johan Maurits. Whitehead and Boeseman 1989 provides a careful and encyclopedic overview of artistic production in Dutch Brazil, with an emphasis on natural history. The edited volume van Groesen 2014 and the researcher’s monograph van Groesen 2017 address the influence and reception of Dutch Brazil, especially as mediated through print and visual culture. Van den Boogaart 2021 offers a select history of art in Dutch Brazil, highlighting the author’s primary areas of research.

• van den Boogaart, Ernst. Het land van de suikermolen: Brazilië verbeeld door de geleerden en kunstenaars van Johan Maurits. Zwolle, The Netherlands: WBooks, 2021.

  Five focused and well-written essays that draw from other publications by the author. Emphasizes the colonial context and reiterates his interpretative model of civility and savagery. Richly illustrated.

• van den Boogaart, Ernst, and Frits J. Duparc, eds. Zo wijd de wereld Strekt: Tentoonstelling naar aan leiding van de 300ste sterfdag van Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen op 20 december 1979. The Hague: Stichting Johan Maurits van Nassau, 1979.

  Exhibition catalogue and general overview of artistic production and material culture in the colony. Illustrations feature works of art by and after the artists and scientists in Dutch Brazil.

• van den Boogaart, Ernst, Hans R. Hoetink, and Peter J. P. Whitehead, eds. Johan Maurits van Nassau Siegen, 1604–1679: A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil; Essays on the Occasion of the Tercentenary of His Death. The Hague: Stichting Johan Maurits van Nassau, 1979.

  Seminal interdisciplinary work with well-researched essays. R. Joppien’s “The Dutch Vision of Brazil: Johan Maurits and His Artists” is a key study that should not be overlooked.

• van Groesen, Michiel. Amsterdam’s Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

  DOI: 10.9783/9780812293456

  Cultural history focusing on the reception of Dutch Brazil. Addresses Count Johan Maurits’s deployment of his Brazilian collection after 1644 as well as the post-Brazilian work of Post and Eckhout.

• van Groesen, Michiel, ed. The Legacy of Dutch Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

  Engaging and wide-ranging collection of essays on Dutch Brazil by leading scholars in the field. Subsections on the cultural and national legacies of Dutch Brazil address Johan Maurits’s Brazilian collection, Piso and Marggrafe’s Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, and the paintings of Post and Eckhout, among other topics.

• Whitehead, Peter J. P., and Marinus Boeseman. A Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brazil: Animals, Plants and People by the Artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau. Amsterdam and Oxford: North Holland, 1989.

  Exhaustive resource for anyone working on an artistic or scientific subject related to Dutch Brazil. Not intended for the general reader; emphasis on identification not interpretation. Fully illustrated with an excellent and expansive bibliography.