Johann Moritz Rugendas (Augsburg, Alemanha 1802 - Weilheim, Alemanha 1858)
Johann Moritz Rugendas was a painter, draftsman and printmaker. From childhood, he practiced drawing and engraving with his father, Johann Lorenz Rugendas II (1775–1826). He attended the studio of Albrecht Adam (1786–1862) between 1815 and 1817, before entering the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Influenced by the travel accounts of the naturalists J. B. von Spix (1781–1826) and C. Fr. Ph. von Martius (1794–1868), as well as by the work of Thomas Ender (1793–1875), he came to Brazil in 1821 as the documentary draftsman of the Langsdorff Expedition.
In 1824, he left the expedition but continued, independently, to record the country's human types, customs, landscapes, fauna and flora. He traveled through Mato Grosso, Bahia and Espírito Santo, returning to Rio de Janeiro that same year. During his first stay in Brazil, he made no oil paintings, concentrating on drawings, occasionally colored with watercolor.
Between 1825 and 1828, he lived between Paris, Augsburg and Munich, a period in which he devoted himself to publishing his work Voyage Pittoresque dans le Brésil. In 1828, he went to Italy, where he came into contact with new techniques, taking a particular interest in the use of color and in oil sketches. Encouraged by the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), he traveled to Mexico in 1831 to gather material for a new publication. There he began painting in oil, using the techniques he had absorbed in Italy.
From 1834 onwards, he traveled across South America, through Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia. In 1845, he arrived once again in Rio de Janeiro, where he portrayed members of the imperial family and was invited to take part in the Exposição Geral de Belas Artes. The following year, he returned to Europe for good. In exchange for an annual lifetime pension, he handed over his collection of drawings and watercolors to King Maximilian II of Bavaria.
Critical Commentary
Johann Moritz Rugendas belongs to the seventh generation of a family of draftsmen, painters, engravers and printers. He is introduced to art as a child by his father, Johann Lorenz Rugendas II (1775 - 1826), director and teacher of the drawing school in Augsburg. He attends the studio of the academic battle painter Albrecht Adam (1786 - 1862) until 1817, when he moves to Munich to study at the Academy of Fine Arts with Lorenzo Quaglio II (1793 - 1869). The influence of academic training will remain throughout the artist's production, which tends to value drawing in its compositions and to represent subjects through an ideal and universal reworking of the observation of the particular.
In 1821 the young artist signs a contract with the Russian consul Langsdorff to take part in his scientific expedition through Brazil as a draftsman-illustrator. Thus begins the work of one of the leading illustrators of the New World in the 19th century. He arrives in Rio de Janeiro in 1822, at a moment of political ferment with the country's independence process. Problems of various kinds delay the start of the exploratory journeys into the Brazilian interior by two years. Although he lives in isolation with the other members of the expedition at the Fazenda Mandioca, owned by the consul, Rugendas frequently goes to the capital, making friends with the artists of the French Artistic Mission. In this period he depicts the natural landscape, the fauna, the flora, the physical types and views of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In 1824 they finally set off for Minas Gerais, passing through São Paulo. Rugendas soon falls out with Langsdorff and leaves the group - he is later replaced by Adrien Taunay (1803-1828) and Hercule Florence (1804-1879) - continuing his travels alone. The exact itinerary followed by the artist is unknown, but his drawings show that he passed through São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, Espírito Santo, Bahia and Pernambuco. He returns to Rio de Janeiro in 1825 and soon leaves for Europe, intending to publish his drawings.
One hundred lithographs based on Rugendas's Brazilian drawings are published in the volume Voyage Pittoresque dans le Brésil (bilingual French-German edition, 1827/1835). Conceived as a travel book for the general public, it involves 22 lithographers, with Victor Aimé Huber preparing the texts. To this day the book is considered one of the most important iconographic documents on 19th-century Brazil. It is divided into the following sections: landscapes; types and costumes; uses and customs of the Indigenous peoples; the life of Europeans; Europeans in Bahia and Pernambuco; uses and customs of Black people. It should be noted, however, that Rugendas's Brazilian work is not always a faithful copy of reality. The illustrations of plants and animals are meticulous and objective; in these cases the artist draws under the supervision of naturalists. Regarding the landscapes, Diener speaks of "a faithful image of the natural surroundings", grasped more as a whole than in detail - except, of course, for the prints in which the lithographer recreates a different image from the original drawing (such as the plate Entrada da Barra do Rio de Janeiro [Entrance to the Bay of Rio de Janeiro], engraved by the Romantic artist P. Bonington). But it is in the scenes of daily life of the Brazilian population of the time and in the ethnographic portraits that we see the artist intent on creating idealized images, more programmatic than real. The bodies of Black and Indigenous people are depicted in a classical style, with softened, Europeanized features, and the situation of the enslaved is played down (work is shown as an almost playful activity in plates such as Preparação da Raiz de Mandioca [Preparing Manioc Root] and Colheita de Café [Coffee Harvest], for example). Already at the time of its publication, Voyage Pittoresque was criticized for its lack of documentary character. But it was a great success with the general public, circulating widely in Brazil in its French edition, perhaps because of the benevolent way it portrays 19th-century society.
He remains in Europe until 1831. He gains the support of the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859), whose influence leads him to decide to become "the illustrator of the new territories of the world". He plans a second journey to the American continent (1831 to 1847), through Mexico, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. To carry out this task, he seeks to improve his painting. He becomes familiar with the advanced artistic currents (Neoclassicism and Romanticism) and spends a period studying in Rome. From 1829 until his departure, he paints canvases on Brazilian themes based on his drawings. They are idyllic spaces reflecting ideas then current about the New World as an earthly paradise and the habitat of the noble savage.
The graphic and pictorial body of work produced by Rugendas during his years in the Americas is one of the fundamental sources of knowledge about 19th-century American society and landscape. On his second stay in Rio de Janeiro (1845-1846) he receives an extraordinary welcome from the Brazilian Crown, which commissions several portraits. He takes part in the Exposições Gerais de Belas Artes (1845 and 1846) at the invitation of Félix Taunay (1795 - 1881). He returns to Europe without going back to the subjects of his first Brazilian experience. He sells his entire body of work to Maximilian II of Bavaria in exchange for a lifetime pension, losing it years later for failing to produce paintings based on his American works, as agreed. He dies in difficult financial circumstances, embittered by the certainty of artistic failure.
Critiques
"Humboldt and Martius are preliminary references for a first approach to the synthesis Rugendas achieved in his picturesque album. Humboldt and Bonpland's journey to Latin America is, in general, inseparable from the construction of the tropical landscape. In particular, the model of the Atlas Pittoresque. Vue des Cordillères et des Monuments du Peuple Indigène de l'America offers a solution in which a scientific conception is expressed through art (...) Appropriating the scientifically grounded pictorial vision recommended by Humboldt, Rugendas approaches the picturesque, seeking the country's regional characteristics, which are defined and manifested simultaneously in the general shape of the land, in the outline of the mountains against the plain, in geographical geology and in geobotany. His drawings are able to turn physical features into a cosmogonic sphere of human life. (...) In his drawings Rugendas asserts an organic conception of life in complete interdependence, unconcerned with individualizing the units that form the landscape and emphasizing the way they come together as a whole. (...) In Rugendas's original drawings, the great gesture that sustains the overall vision shines through, the way he first draws the whole and then intensifies some part".
Ana Maria de Moraes Belluzzo
BELLUZZO, Ana Maria de Moraes. O Brasil dos viajantes. São Paulo: Metalivros; Salvador: Fundação Emílio Odebrecht, 1994. v. 1, p. 77. Volume 1: imaginário do novo mundo.
"Rugendas has a place in art history as one of the greatest creators of American iconography, as a versatile painter whose thematic range extends from naturalist landscape studies to the most sophisticated historical compositions. His knowledge of the Americas is grounded in twenty years of travel, during which he journeyed from Mexico to southern Chile, completing the longest route on the continent undertaken by any 19th-century traveler. On concluding his great American journey, Rugendas took a retrospective look at the work produced during this crucial stage of his career; this autobiographical recapitulation took shape in the selection of oil paintings he presented at the Exposição Geral de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 1845. This exhibition earned him the highest public recognition for his work, in the form of the decoration of Knight of the Imperial Order of the Southern Cross conferred by the Brazilian Empire".
Pablo Diener e Maria de Fátima Costa
DIENER, Pablo; COSTA, Maria de Fátima. A América de Rugendas: obras e documentos. Edição Angel Bojadsen, Edilberto Fernando Verza. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 1999. p. 13-14.
Collections
Acervo Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich - Munique (Alemanha)
Acervo Städtische Kunstsammlungen Augsburg - Augsburg (Alemanha)
Arquivo da Academia de Ciências de São Petersburgo - São Petersburgo (Rússia)
Coleção Brasiliana / Fundação Estudar - São Paulo SP
Coleção Itaú - São Paulo SP
Coleção Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Berlim (Alemanha)
Museu de Belas Artes - Caracas (Venezuela)
Museu Histórico de Montevidéu - Cabildo (Uruguai)
Museu Histórico Nacional - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - Santiago (Chile)
Museu Nacional de História - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Museum für Völkerkunde, Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Berlim (Alemanha)
Museus Castro Maya - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Palácios e Jardins Estatais - Potsdam-Sanssouci (Alemanha)
Group Exhibitions
1845 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 6th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Aiba - awarded the Imperial Order of the Southern Cross
1846 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Aiba
Posthumous Exhibitions
1948 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective of Painting in Brazil, at MNBA
1966 - Austin (United States) - Art of Latin America since Independence, at The University of Texas at Austin. Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery
1966 - New Haven (United States) - Art of Latin America since Independence, at The Yale University Art Gallery
1966 - San Diego (United States) - Art of Latin America since Independence, at La Jolla Museum of Art
1966 - New Orleans (United States) - Art of Latin America since Independence, at Isaac Delgado Museum of Art
1966 - San Francisco (United States) - Art of Latin America since Independence, at San Francisco Art Museum
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rugendas, at MIS/SP
1977 - São Paulo SP - 33 Original Drawings by Rugendas: Pirajá da Silva Collection
1977 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1983 - Recife PE - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves], at Fundação Joaquim Nabuco. Administração Central
1984 - Aracaju SE - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves]
1984 - Brasília DF - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves]
1984 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves], at Museu Gulbenkian da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
1984 - Salvador BA - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves]
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1984 - Vitória ES - 50 Years of Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves]
1985 - São Paulo SP - 100 Itaú Works, at Masp
1990 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rugendas x Photography
1990 - São Paulo SP - Rugendas x Photography
1990 - Curitiba PR - Rugendas x Photography
1990 - Belo Horizonte MG - Rugendas x Photography
1990 - Salvador BA - Rugendas x Photography
1990 - São Paulo SP - The Art Collection of the Municipality of São Paulo, at Masp
1991 - São Paulo SP - The Forest, at MAC/USP
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nature: Four Centuries of Art in Brazil, at CCBB
1992 - São Paulo SP - Sérgio's View of Brazilian Art: Drawings and Paintings, at Biblioteca Municipal Mário de Andrade
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1994 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Rio de Janeiro: Overseas Capital, at Museu Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio de Janeiro: Overseas Capital, at CCBB
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazil of the Travelers, at Masp
1994 - São Paulo SP - A Critical Look at the 19th-Century Collection, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1995 - Belo Horizonte MG - Heirs of the Night: Fragments of the Black Imaginary, at Centro de Cultura de Belo Horizonte
1995 - São Paulo SP - Today's Brazil in the Mirror of the 19th Century: German and Brazilian Artists Retrace the Langsdorff Expedition, at Masp
1996 - London (United Kingdom) - Brazil Through European Eyes, at Christie's
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Today's Brazil in the Mirror of the 19th Century: German and Brazilian Artists Retrace the Langsdorff Expedition, at Fundação Casa França-Brasil
1998 - Brasília DF - Brazilian Like Me, Like Whom?, at Ministério das Relações Exteriores
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil Rediscovered, at Paço Imperial
1999 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Like Me, Like Whom?, at Museu de Arte Brasileira. Salão Cultural
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Views of Rio in the Geyer Collection, at CCBB
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition: Black in Body and Soul and The Distant Gaze, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Coffee, at Banco Real
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Watercolor, at Centro Cultural Light
2002 - Niterói RJ - Brazilian Art on Paper: 19th and 20th Centuries, at Solar do Jambeiro
2002 - São Paulo SP - Rugendas in Mexico, at Memorial da América Latina
2003 - São Paulo SP - Views of Brazil: Brasiliana Collection, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2004 - São Paulo SP - Paper Cabinet, at CCSP
Source: Itaú Cultural
