British artists in nineteenth-century Brazil: representations of the Brazilian landscape in the works of Charles Landseer and Marianne North

• Grant number: 20/11942-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2021
• End date: March 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Sidney Coli Junior
• Grantee: Robert John Wilkes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project examines four British artists who travelled to Brazil during the nineteenth century: Charles Landseer (1799-1879) and Marianne North (1830-90). Although the subject of British artists in Brazil has been studied by some Brazilian scholars, the topic has received almost no attention in the historiography of British art, which have focused more on artists' travels within the British Empire and to the Middle East. Shifting the focus to Brazil, this project will research the four artists' representations of the country's landscapes in their paintings, drawings and watercolours. The project will consider how these artists adapted the visual traditions of their home country to fit the tropical environments which they encountered. The project therefore seeks to understand how the artistic depictions of the Brazilian landscape changed throughout the nineteenth century, reflecting broader changes in British art - from the picturesque visions of Landseer in the 1820s to a more precise, Pre-Raphaelite rendering of nature with North in the 1870s. Furthermore, the project will document the ways in which the artists' visions of Brazil were disseminated back in Britain, in the form of exhibited paintings and published engravings. It will therefore demonstrate how Landseer and North helped to shape the idea of Brazil in the British popular imagination. The visual material and textual sources which this project will consider are found in museums and archives in Brazil (the Instituto Moreira Salles, MASP, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo) and the UK (the Marianne North Gallery). (AU)