Thomas Ender (Viena, Áustria 1793 - idem 1875)
Painter, watercolorist, printmaker and draftsman.
He was the twin brother of the painter Johann Ender (1793 - 1854). In 1806, at the age of 13, he began his studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien [Academy of Fine Arts Vienna]. He devoted himself to landscape painting in watercolor. He received several awards at the Academy, notably the Grand Prize for Painting in 1817, in the landscape category. The prizewinning picture was acquired by Prince Metternich (1773 - 1859), who became his main patron. In 1817, he came to Brazil with the Scientific Expedition of Natural History that accompanied the Austrian retinue on the occasion of the marriage of Archduchess Leopoldina (1797 - 1826) to Dom Pedro I (1798 - 1834). During his short stay of ten months, he painted panoramas of the coast and urban scenes, depicting churches, public buildings and squares. Although he produced just over 700 works about Brazil, he neither produced nor published an album with this material. However, some of his works appear in books by naturalist scientists of the time. This body of work is held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He returned to Austria in 1818 and, a year later, accompanied Emperor Francis I (1768 - 1835) on a trip to Italy, then receiving a study grant in Rome. In 1824, he was appointed a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, a position he held until 1850. From 1829 on, alongside his Academy duties, he became official chamber painter to Archduke Johann (1782 - 1859), brother of Emperor Francis I. In this role, he painted landscapes of the Austrian Alps and of the Archduke's travels.
Critical Commentary
Thomas Ender, together with his twin brother Johann Ender (1793 - 1854), enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1806. While Johann showed an interest in history painting, Thomas turned to landscape painting. In 1810, he competed for the Academy's Gundel Prize and won in the landscape drawing category. Around 1812, he began to develop his own style in watercolor: he used a wide range of color nuances, drew the central area of the landscape in greater detail and suggested the foreground with broad brushstrokes.
In 1815, he received a study grant from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna that enabled him to make long journeys; he traveled through the mountainous region of Salzburg and the Tyrol and produced a large number of watercolors. In 1817, Ender received the Academy's Grand Prize for Painting in the landscape category. Prince and Chancellor Metternich acquired the painter's landscape and became his great supporter.
That same year, on the occasion of the marriage of the Austrian Archduchess Carolina Josefa Leopoldina to Dom Pedro de Alcântara, royal heir to the throne of Portugal and Brazil, a scientific expedition of natural history was sent to Brazil with the aim of gathering information about the country and setting up a Brazilian museum in Vienna. Recommended by Metternich, Ender joined the expedition team as its painter; the team was led by the Bavarian natural scientists Johann von Spix (1781 - 1826) and Carl von Martius (1794 - 1868), among others.
During his stay in Brazil, Ender made more than 700 drawings and watercolors. On board ship, he painted a circular panorama of Guanabara Bay and a series of separate views. In Rio de Janeiro, the artist recorded churches, public buildings, squares and their surroundings. He depicted Brazilian society of the time and slavery, which he approached critically, taking particular interest in the different nationalities of the enslaved. In 1818, the scientific journey began and its members split up to explore different regions. Ender first traveled with Spix and Martius through the region of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, recording landscapes and towns. On returning to Rio de Janeiro, he fell seriously ill and went back to Austria, taking with him the drawings and watercolors from the journey, most of which are now in the Kupferstichkabinett [Print Room] of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Thomas Ender, more than any other traveler of the period, mastered landscape painting. His works show careful observation of vegetation, attention to perspective and planes, and the capturing of urban space from different viewpoints.
Critiques
"Thomas Ender practiced oil and watercolor painting, standing out above all in the latter technique. As a landscape painter, he worked not only in his homeland and in Brazil, but also in Turkey, Greece and other regions. Obviously, the part of his production that concerns us closely is the one made in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and their surroundings. These are drawings and watercolors of extreme sensitivity, cast in an elegant and agile line and washed with extraordinary skill; made in a single burst, these watercolors keep all the emotion of the artist's first impression before the motif. In them, Ender proves to be one of the greatest painters who were in Brazil in the early 19th century, and one of the most remarkable Austrian artists of his time".
José Roberto Teixeira Leite
LEITE, José Roberto Teixeira. Dicionário crítico da pintura no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Artlivre, 1988. p.176-177.
"Ender also observed the everyday life of Brazilian society. Above all regarding slavery, he is quite critical in his various sketches. We can see slaves chained beside their overseer, slaves on their way to the interior, or at their tasks. A moving sheet shows the moment when an enslaved woman was being sold; while the buyer examines her teeth, a fat priest looks on indifferently from the side. In addition, what caught Ender's attention were the different nationalities of the slaves. He noted the difference between Africans from Angola and those from the Congo. He also refers to creoles, mulattoes and freed slaves. A favorite motif of Ender's was the customary litter, lined with fabric, in which white masters were carried at the time. And the Chinese who worked on the Royal Estate of Santa Cruz also appear in Ender's drawings".
Robert Wagner
WAGNER, Robert. Thomas Ender (1793-1875) e a Expedição Austríaca ao Brasil. In: ______. Thomas Ender no Brasil (1817-1818): Aquarelas pertencentes à Academia de Belas Artes em Viena. Áustria: Akademische Druck-u, 1997. p. 37.
"Thomas Ender is a traveling painter - like others in the last century - whose work did not circulate in 19th-century Brazil. His colleagues and admirers in Rio de Janeiro in 1817-1818 probably saw him in action, painting and drawing parts of the city. However - to give an example - the two beautiful 'views' in the Museu Histórico da Cidade were watercolors bought by a Brazilian in Paris a few years ago and sold to the city of Rio de Janeiro. Ender did not normally fit into the intrinsic expansion of art in Brazil, being in fact an Austrian painter. Nevertheless, the presence of a Brazilian theme in his work of that period is useful for understanding aesthetic and historical aspects of our country, to which it relates through its content. The case of Ender's work, imported in the 20th century through temporary exhibitions of originals or photographic reproductions and books, would be exceptional, since it is a large body of work kept in a single place, so to speak, and representative of a concentration of creativity during his journey. It is a kind of art importation that happens late and differs from imports in architecture, which are fixed and used in another way. It is not similar to the importation, for example, of Italian architecture which, in colonial times, could come to Brazil through influences mediated by Portugal. In this latter case, there is the example of the design of the Arsenal de Guerra building in Rio de Janeiro, from 1764, based on an Italian model. But in a form of civilization, architecture has a more direct and broader use than drawings and watercolors".
Mário Barata
BARATA, Mário. Aspecto "Histórico" e de Evolução Formal e Sensível na Temática Brasileira de Paisagem de Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Thomas Ender e Félix-Émile Taunay. In: SALGUEIRO, Heliana Angotti (coord.). Paisagem e arte: a invenção da natureza, a evolução do olhar. São Paulo: CBHA : CNPq : Fapesp, 2000. p. 267
Collections
Acervo Banco Itaú S.A. - São Paulo SP
Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien - Viena (Áustria)
Posthumous Exhibitions
1951 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Group show, at Biblioteca Nacional
1954 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Museu do Ipiranga, on the occasion of the city's 4th Centenary celebrations
1954 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Biblioteca Nacional
1972 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Memória da Independência: 1808-1825 [Memory of Independence: 1808-1825], at MNBA
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Casa do Bispo: seu tempo e seu espaço [The Bishop's House: Its Time and Its Space], at Casa do Bispo
1991 - São Paulo SP - The Forest, at MAC/USP
1994 - Graz (Austria) - Thomas Ender in Brasilien [Thomas Ender in Brazil], at Akademische Druck
1994 - São Paulo SP - O Brasil dos Viajantes [The Brazil of the Travelers], at Masp
1994 - São Paulo SP - O Olhar e o Ficar. A busca do Paraíso: 170 anos de Imigração dos povos de Língua Alemã [Looking and Staying. The Search for Paradise: 170 Years of Immigration of German-Speaking Peoples], at Pinacoteca do Estado
1995 - Lisbon (Portugal) - O Brasil dos Viajantes [The Brazil of the Travelers], at Centro Cultural de Belém
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Thomas Ender no Brasil 1817-1997 [Thomas Ender in Brazil 1817-1997], at MNBA
1997 - São Paulo SP - Thomas Ender no Brasil 1817-1997 [Thomas Ender in Brazil 1817-1997], at Masp
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil Rediscovered, at Paço Imperial
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Paisagem Pitoresca no Brasil [The Picturesque Landscape in Brazil], at Museu da Chácara do Céu
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Visões do Rio na Coleção Geyer [Views of Rio in the Geyer Collection], at CCBB
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Mostra do Redescobrimento: O Olhar Distante [Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition: The Distant Gaze], at Fundação Bienal
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Paisagem Carioca [The Rio Landscape], at MAM/RJ
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Watercolor, at Centro Cultural Light
2010 - São Paulo SP - 6th SP-Arte, at Fundação Bienal
2011 - Campos do Jordão SP - Arte e Cultura no Vale do Paraíba [Art and Culture in the Paraíba Valley], at Palácio Boa Vista
Source: Itaú Cultural
