Albert Eckhout (Groningen Holanda ca.1610 - idem ca.1666)
Albert Eckhout was a painter and draftsman. He began his studies in painting with Gheert Roeleffs, his uncle. At the service of Count Maurício de Nassau, governor-general of Dutch Brazil, he traveled to Brazil, where he remained for seven years, between 1637 and 1644. Among his traveling companions in the Nassau delegation, the artists stood out. Frans Post and Georg Marcgraf. During the period in which he was in the Brazilian Northeast, he developed intense activity as a documentary filmmaker about fauna and flora, in addition to painting human types. This phase is considered the most important of his career.
During his stay in Brazil, Albert Eckhout produced about 400 oil drawings and sketches, which were presented by Nassau to Frederich Wilhelm, voter of Brandenburg, in 1652, and later grouped by Christian Mentzel between 1660 and 1664 in the volumes Theatri Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae and Miscellanea Cleyeri, currently belonging to the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow, Poland. It also produced 26 oil canvases that were presented to King Frederik III of Denmark in 1654, of which 24 are now preserved in the ethnography department of the NationalMuseet, Copenhagen.
In May 1644, Eckhout returned to the Netherlands, taking up residence in Groningen. He later married and moved to Amersfoort, east of Amsterdam, where his two sons were born. In 1653, he went on to work as a painter at the court of Johan Georg II in Dresden. In 1663, he returned to reside in Groningen, where he died around the end of 1665 or early 1666. At the end of the 18th century, a series of cards of his own were transformed into tapestries by the manufacture of Gobelins.
Critical Comment
Little is known about the life of Dutch painter Albert Eckhout before his arrival in Pernambuco in 1637. He was probably started in the arts by his uncle Gheert. Roeleffs, but there is no record of any of his work carried out before his stay in Brazil. Perhaps he was nominated for Count Maurício de Nassau (1604 - 1679) by the painter and architect Jacob van Campen (1595 - 1657) to integrate the delegation of artists and scientists responsible for documenting the new world during his stay. of the Dutch government in Pernambuco, between 1637 and 1644. In addition to Eckhout, whose task was to portray the fauna, flora and Brazilian human types, the painter Frans Post (1612 - 1680), the doctor was part of the group. Wilhem Piso (1611 - 1678) and the naturalist Georg Marcgraf (1610 - 1644). of live specimens found on their excursions through Brazilian territory or through the botanical garden created by Nassau. Donated by Nassau to Frederich Wilhelm in 1652, the studies were grouped by Christian Mentzel in 1660-1664 in the volumes Theatri Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae and Miscellanea Cleyeri, Today belonging to the Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Krakow, Poland. These quick invoice works, but which seek to fix both the general characteristics and the specific details of the observed motifs, served as the basis for the creation of their large oil canvases, carried out later in a studio, and for tapestries of the old series and new Indians, manufactured by Manufactura de Gobelins, in Paris, France.
Albert Eckhout becomes known mainly for the set of 21 oil canvases on Brazilian motifs. This set consists of the four pairs of ethnographic portraits of the inhabitants of Brazil in the 17th century - Homem Tapuia, 1643 and Mulher Tapuia, 1641; Tupi Homem, 1643 and Tupi Woman, 1641; Mulato Man, s.d. and Mamluk woman, 1641 and black man and black woman, both from 1641 - a series of 12 still lifes with tropical fruits and vegetables or grown on Brazilian soil (all without date indication) and the large panel Dance of the Tapuias, s.d.. By donation of Nassau to King Frederik III of Denmark, in 1654, the works currently belong to the NationalMuseet [National Museum of Denmark] in Copenhagen.
If for a long time these Works were seen as faithful portraits of the Brazilian reality, valued for their documentary quality, today it is known that an intricate relationship between ideal and reality gave rise to these paintings. First, it should be noted that the composition of the four ethnographic pairs follows a pattern found in illustrations of travelers' books: the figure is placed in the center of the foreground, in natural size and in a frontal position. His postures refer to European portraits of the time. In the background, there is the horizon line located well below the midline. Characteristic elements of the habitat of each ethnic group appear throughout the frame and serve their symbolic construction. For example, the black woman's adornments (hat decorated with peacock feathers, earrings and choker with pearl pendant, red coral necklace, gold or brass bracelet and a beaded bracelet) alert us to the character idealized and rhetorical of the focused figure. The basket in its right hand originates from Angola or the Democratic Republic of Congo, associating women with the point of origin of most black slaves from the Dutch in Brazil. Perhaps that is why this woman resembles the real image of a slave of the time so little. Likewise, the guinea pigs at the feet of the Mamluk woman and the wild dog between the Tapuia woman's legs should be understood as external signs of each character's civility index. In this sense, it should always be borne in mind that these portraits somehow fix the perspective of Dutch domination in Brazil than Brazil itself, as Ana Maria de Moraes Belluzo observed.2
Another given to consider is the decorative function of such paintings. Its exact destination is not known for sure, whether they should occupy the main hall of the Freiburg Palace or serve the decoration of an "exotic" room in a European palace. There is also no certainty that these paintings were carried out in Brazil. However, keeping in mind this decorative quality helps to understand the somewhat unusual scale of the set. The still life series, measuring between 85 x 85 cm and 93 x 93 cm, impresses with the richness of colors and details and naturally and by the size of the fruits and vegetables. The arrangement of the fruits on a table or parapet, in the foreground very close to the viewer and in contrast to the grayish background of the sky, enhances the exotic character of the set. more "specialized"3 of Dutch genre painting of the 17th century: still-life painting. The way in which it exposes the interior of fruits and vegetables, the documentary effort to present the texture of their surfaces, often resorting to powerful contrasts of light and shadow, the simultaneity of different points of view of the same thematic element, dissecting the theme in parts - for example, the Cassava in Quadro Cassava, s.d. -, reveal the microscopic view (in an enlarged scale) characteristic of northern painters. As Svetlana Alpers observes, these artists saw how one of their tasks to offer a new and concrete knowledge of the world from the direct insertion of the eye into reality. Ancient Germany.
2 BELLUZZO, Ana Maria de Moraes. The Brazil of Travelers: Imaginary of the New World. São Paulo: Metalivros, 1994. v. 1.
3 GOMBRICH, E.H. The History of Art. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Guanabara, 1988. p. 338.
4 ALPERS, Svetlana. The art of describing: Dutch art in the 17th century. São Paulo: Edusp, 1999.
Criticism
"Eckhout was not a great painter. There are paintings, or parts of paintings, which reveal great virtuosity and he had an extremely honest and penetrating when it came to seeing what was in front of him, but the paintings are essentially memorable for one thing: his exotic themes. He stands out among the regular artists of his time because he chose, or was forced to choose, a highly unusual field and because he did it Competently, while his contemporaries carefully explored floral arrangements, half-peeled lemons and tin pitchers, apparently placed in some darkened room, Eckhout was busy with spiders the size of his hand, boas and coconuts in full light of the day."
Peter James Palmer Whitehead and Martin Boeseman
Whitehead, Peter James Palmer; BOEEMAN, Martin. Albert Eckhout. In:_______;_______. A portrait of Dutch Brazil from the 17th century: animals, plants and people, by the artists of Johan Maurits de Nassau. Rio de Janeiro: Kosmos, 1989. p. 178.
"The information about the life and work of Albert Eckhout is much more sparse than about Frans Post, and the production that the artist would have done before and after his stay in Brazil remains mysterious. pre-Brazilian of Eckhout and the authorship of those that can be attributed to him is discussed after returning from Brazil. In charge of Maurício de Nassau of recording fauna, flora and human types (while Frans Post was in charge of the landscapes and battle scenes), Eckhout must have arrived in Brazil at the same time that Nassau and Post, in 1637. In addition to numerous studies of plants and animals, as well as still lifes with tropical fruits, Eckhout performs during his stay in the Northeast a series of Eight large frames (c. 265 x 165 cm), which fortunately are still preserved together in the National Museum of Denmark and form one of the most valuable groups of images with a New World theme. It is difficult not to exaggerate the importance of these paintings in which the three races observed by Eckhout in Brazil are represented: the black, the Indian and the mestizo, with the refinement of differentiating the tapuia from the Tupinambá and the mameluca of the mestizo. These paintings enthused both Humboldt and Pedro II when they discovered them in Copenhagen in the 19th century. The latter ordered copies of six of them that are now at the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute."
Pedro Corrêa do Lago
lago, Pedro Corrêa do Lago. Albert Eckhout. Rediscovery, 2000, São Paulo. The distant look. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 years Visual Arts, 2000. p. 110.
"With regard to the context and technique, as Paintings can be divided into two series: portraits and still lifes. What they have in common is the exotic nature of the content, confirming European conventions and myths. The paintings were probably commissioned by Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen for the apotheosis of the wonders in which he participated and the greatness he created. With this aspect in mind, function, purpose and location for which they were designed can be analyzed and deduced. The number of paintings, their themes and composition clearly suggest that they were conceived as decoration (...) The theme of paintings is the exotic and, ..., the exotic is never at home. We could add that exaggerations and myths should never be confronted with reality. As a result, the room or rooms with such a decoration could hardly be imagined outside a European scenario. The black slave with his majestic sword, the precious weapon of the mestizo and, above all, the cannibal woman Tapuia holding the remains of a human body are so perfect in line with the preconceived vision and scheme of the non-European world, which would prove to be false if subjected to an accurate examination. (...) The botanical, zoo and, above all ethnographic content of paintings, the paintings are less realistic than normally supposed. This does not diminish its importance or artistic value. There is a complexity of meanings: transcriptions and exaggerations emphasize the ideological function. The paintings are imposing in their dimensions and themes. They were designed to impress the 17th century connoisseur, but this effect has stood the test of time. Its documentary value is only debatable if considered from an approach to ethnographic documentation of the 21st century".
Barbara Berlowicz
BERLOURICZ, Barbara. and Technique In: VRIES, Elly de (org.), DOURADO, Guilherme Mazza (org.) Albert Eckhout Returns to Brazil: 1644-2002. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 2002. P. 206-207.
"In Eckhout, proximity and distance are contemplated in a systematic unit. Both are necessary for descriptive and registration sharpness. More than backgrounds for typological enumeration and qualification, distances are the same as the first planes. This type of consistency (of difficult operation, for rejecting the easy and workshop resources of aerial perspective blurring) has been taken as a defect of the painter. On the contrary, I see there merit and great company in the artist. The obsessive imposition of the detail (clarity and focus) from the first to the last plane, from the earth to the sky, is consistent with the mystical and allegorical stripping of the scene. This materialistic, harsh and precise painting is, therefore, realistic without being an illusion or an elusive one, however, it is acceptable even for Catholics... who can see, in addition to truths, reverence for life. What we talk about, in a mirror, is, however, more of pragmatic than of pantheism, and, of course, the modeling of the landscape-world by pieces of knowledge. The specular plan in which facts and things reverberate in the paintings of Eckhout is a syntactic scenario, a circuit of earthly and terrestrial relations: the systematic enumeration of the thing to be seen. and to be reviewed. Unlike an accessory in a genre scene that points to symbolic flight - (common in Rubens and Italians, for example) - all, I mean, all the same, detail of Eckhout's painting is persistent and durable, is not evanescent in relation to the metaphor. In this sense, the painter highlights and circumscribes the singularity in the field of enumerations, a field that, unlike that of meta-imaginary painting, is necessarily finite. Such finitude, coagulated in objects, beings, people and things (enumerated, qualified), fixed in a recurring and compulsive gnosis is a territory and, he immediately tries to say; The territory of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. namely: Eckhout carries out (in the vast extension of the etymon) a metaphor of the conquest, insofar as it captures and treasures the domains seen by Nassau". Albert Eckhout or Optical Conquest In: Vries, Elly de (org.), Dourado, Guilherme Mazza (org.). Albert Eckhout Returns to Brazil: 1644-2002. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 2002. P. 220-221.
Fixes
NationalMuseet - Copenhagen (Denmark)
Statens Museum for Kunst - Copenhagen (Denmark)
Posthumous exhibitions
1953 - The Hague (Holland) - Maurits de Brasiliaan, Mauritshuis
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The painters of Maurício de Nassau, at MAM/RJ
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at the Bienal Foundation
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Images from Dutch Brazil 1630-1654, at Paço Imperial
1991 - São Paulo SP - A Mata, at MAC/USP
1991 - São Paulo SP - Albert Eckhout and its time: Dutch Brazil 1637-1644, at MASP
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nature: Four centuries of art in Brazil, at CCBB
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1994 - São Paulo SP - The Brazil of Travelers, at Masp
1995 - Lisbon (Portugal) - O Brasil dos Travelers at the Belém Cultural Center
1996 - London (England) - Brazil: Through European Eyes, at the Brazilian Embassy
1998 - São Paulo SP - 24th International Biennial of São Paulo, Biennial Foundation
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 rediscovery show. The distant look, at the Bienal Foundation
2002 - Brasília DF - Albert Eckhout returns to Brazil: 1644-2002, at the Caixa Cultural Complex
2002 - Recife PE - Albert Eckhout returns to Brazil: 1644-2002, at the Ricardo Brennand Institute
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Albert Eckhout Returns to Brazil: 1644-2003, at Paço Imperial
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Portraits of the New World: The legacy of the Albert Eckhout, in the Cultural Complex of Caixa
2003 - São Paulo SP - Albert Eckhout Returns to Brazil: 1644-2003, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
2010 - São Paulo SP - Brasiliana Itaú Collection, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
2010 - Belo Horizonte MG - Brasiliana Itaú Collection, at the Clóvis Salgado Foundation. Palácio das Artes
2011 - Brasília DF - Brasília Itaú Collection, at the National Museum of the Cultural Complex of the Republic
2011 - Fortaleza CE - Brasiliana Itaú Collection, at the Unifor Cultural Space
Source: Itaú Cultural