In 1807 during the Peninsular War when Napoleon’s troops
invaded Iberia, King João VI of Portugal fled his
country taking his entire court of almost 15,000 to live in Brazil. A few
months later, seventeen fishermen from the small fishing town of Olhão in the
Algarve crossed the Atlantic to tell their King that the French had been defeated
but he stayed in Brazil for another 13 years. In Rio de Janeiro he created many
new titled nobles among the local Brazilians, he encouraged the development of
manufacturing industry and modernised the city with a sewer system, public
libraries, botanic gardens, an opera house and of course palaces. A
bureaucratic civil service was established and every day life depended upon the
labour of African slaves.
Meanwhile in Paris, Jean Baptiste Debret, was training at the
French Academy of Fine Arts, as a pupil of the famous Jacques-Louis David. In
1816 after the defeat of Napoleon, Debret travelled to Brazil as part of the
French Artistic mission to create an arts and crafts lyceum in Rio de Janeiro.
Later this became the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts where Debret would
teach. Favoured by Dom João VI, Debret
painted his portrait and a painting of the arrival of his new wife Maria Leopoldina
of Austria prior to them becoming Emperor and Empress of Brazil. But Debret
also used his Romantic style to sketch details of the lives of the slaves and
the persecuted indigenous people. The pictures show us an honest view of their
suffering and their day to day lives.
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| Indian creek |
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| The gypsy's house |
On his return to France in 1831 Debret published his
lithographs in a book entitled Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil but
although it depicted such important images of early 19th century
Brazilian life it was not successful and Jean Baptiste Debret died in Paris in
1948 in poverty.
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| Bird Sellers |
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| The Coronation of Dom Pedro I |
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