Brazil Through French Eyes : A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics [1 ed.] 9780826337467, 9780826337450

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“meticulously r esearched and comparative in scope, Brazil through French Eyes captures a nineteenth-century French traveler’s colorful interpretations of Brazil through an astute cultural lens. Biard left a comfortable life and established career at age sixty to travel to Brazil, where he remained for two years, mostly in the wilds of Espírito Santo and the tropical forest of the Amazon. In addition to offering an accomplished and engrossing biographical rendering of Biard and his Deux années au Brésil, it also presents a sweeping history of a genre—the illustrated literature of South American travel—and of its rich historical period. Araujo successfully frames her arguments around the French notion of tropical romanticism. In Araujo’s capable hands, Romantisme Tropical reaches beyond Europe’s fascination with the exotic in the nineteenth century into subsequent time periods, stretching all the way to the present by way of links to other visual media, including photography and film.” —m arguer ite har r ison, Smith College

a r aujo

Brazil through French Eyes a ninet eent h - c entury a r t is t in t h e t ropic s

Brazil through French Eyes

In 1858 François-Auguste Biard, a well-known sixty-year-old French artist, arrived in Brazil to explore and depict its jungles and the people who lived there. What did he see and how did he see it? In this book historian Ana Lucia Araujo examines Biard’s Brazil with special attention to what she calls his “tropical romanticism”: a vision of the country with an emphasis on the exotic. Biard was not only one of the first European artists to encounter and depict native Brazilians but also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants. His 1862 travelogue Deux années au Brésil includes 180 woodcuts illustrating daily life in Brazil. In addition to revealing Brazil’s reliance on slave labor, Biard also describes the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. His work has been largely overlooked both by historians and art historians, and Araujo’s study will establish him on the cultural map of Brazil.

a na lucia ar aujo is a professor of history at Howard University. Her most recent book is Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery. She is also the author of Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic.

ana lucia araujo

isbn 978-0-8263-3745-0 90000

universit y of new mexico press unmpress.com

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7/6/15 12:48 PM

Brazil through French Eyes

Brazil through French Eyes a nin e t een t h - c en t ury a r t i s t i n t h e t r o p i c s

• ana lucia ar aujo

university of new mexico press  |  albuquerque

© 2015 by the University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2015 Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15    1 2 3 4 5 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Araujo, Ana Lucia. Brazil through French eyes : a nineteenth-century artist in the tropics / Ana Lucia Araujo. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8263-3745-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8263-3746-7 (electronic) 1. Biard, François Auguste. Deux années au Brésil. 2. Brazil—Description and travel. 3. Romanticism—Europe. 4. Exoticism in literature. I. Araujo, Ana Lucia. Romantisme tropical. Based on (work): II. Title. F2513.A73 2015 918.104’4—dc23 2014047542 Cover illustration: Prière au soleil dans les forêts de l’Amazonie, oil on canvas, ca 1860, Collection Braziliana, Sáo PaulÓ, Brazil Jacket designed by Catherine Leonardo Typeset by Felicia Cedillos Composed in Minion Pro 10.25/13.5

Contents

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List of Illustrations  vii Acknowledgments xi

Introduction Rediscovering Brazil  xv Chapter 1 A Painter in Search of Exoticism  1 Chapter 2 Tropical Romanticism  35 Chapter 3 Black Brazil as Satirical Commentary  71 Chapter 4 In the Womb of the Rain Forest  103 Chapter 5 Evil Natives  141 Conclusion Multidimensional Tropics  185 Notes 191 Bibliography 219 Index 233

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1.1 Biard, Portrait de l’Empereur du Brésil, d’après le tableau de Biard (Portrait of the Emperor of Brazil, after a Painting by Biard)  25 1.2 Biard, Portrait de l’Impératrice du Brésil (Portrait of the Empress of Brazil)  27 2.1 Biard, Une boutique au Para (A Shop in Pará)  56 2.2 Debret, Boutique de carne secca (Jerked Meat Shop)  57 3.1 Biard, L’église de Santa-Cruz vue de face (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Front View)  73 3.2 Biard, L’église de Santa-Cruz vue de profil (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Lateral View)  74 3.3 Biard, La paye des commissionaires, au Pará (The Pay of the Commission Agents, in Pará)  81 3.4 Biard, Vêtu de blanc (Dressed in White)  84 3.5 Biard, Vêtu de noir (Dressed in Black)  85 3.6 Biard, Négresses à Rio de Janeiro (Black Women in Rio de Janeiro)  86 3.7 Debret, Concours des écoliers, la veille du jour de Saint Alexis (Schoolchildren’s Competition, before the Day of Saint Alexis)  87 3.8 Biard, Nègre gandin à Rio de Janeiro (Black Dandy in Rio de Janeiro)  89 3.9 Biard, Les sapeurs de la garde nationale de Rio de Janeiro (The Soldiers of the National Guard of Rio de Janeiro)  92 3.10 Biard, Une vente d’esclaves, à Rio-de-Janeiro (A Slave Sale in Rio de Janeiro)  93 3.11 Biard, Retour d’une vente d’esclaves à Rio-de-Janeiro (Return from a Slave Sale in Rio de Janeiro)  94 vii

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3.12 Biard, Dames brésiliennes à Rio de Janeiro (Brazilian Ladies in Rio de Janeiro)  97 3.13 Debret, Un employé du gouvernement sortant de chez lui avec sa famille (A Government Employee Leaving His Home with His Family) 98 4.1 Biard, Incendie dans la forêt vierge (Fire in the Virgin Forest)  113 4.2 Biard, Défrichement (Clearing)  115 4.3 Biard, Chacun de nous coupait, taillait à droite et à gauche (Each One of Us Cut and Carved, Right and Left)  117 4.4 Biard, Entrée de la rivière Sangouassou (Entering the Sanguaçu River)  120 4.5 Biard, Ouragan sur l’Amazone (Hurricane on the Amazon)  121 4.6 Biard, L’intérieur du canot (The Canoe’s Interior)  123 4.7 Biard, Chute dans l’eau (Fall in the Water)  124 4.8 Biard, Chasse aux singes à la sarbacane (Hunting Monkeys with Blowguns)  125 4.9 Biard, Le souroucoucou (The Pit Viper)  127 4.10 Biard, Chasse au jaguar (Jaguar Hunting)  129 4.11 Biard, Je pris alors mon fusil par le canon (I Then Took My Gun by the Barrel)  131 4.12 Biard, La tortue (The Turtle)  132 4.13 Biard, Le croquis incommode (The Inconvenient Sketch)  134 4.14 Biard, Présage d’une invasion de fourmis (Omen of an Invasion of Ants)  135 4.15 Biard, Le chat sauvage (The Wildcat)  137 4.16 Whymper, Adventure with Curl-Crested Toucans 138 5.1 Biard, Un nouveau tour de M. Polycarpe (A New Round by Mr. Polycarpe)  147 5.2 Biard, M. Biard photographiant (Mr. Biard Photographing)  148 5.3 Biard, L’indien Almeida mort et la vieille femme Rose sa mère (The Indian Almeida Dead and the Old Woman, Rose, his Mother)  149 5.4 Biard, La buveuse de cachasse (The Cachaça Drinker)  152 5.5 Biard, Mari de la buveuse de cachasse (The Husband of the Cachaça Drinker)  153 5.6 Biard, La grosse Phylis avec les tortues (The Big Phylis with the Turtles)  154 5.7 Biard, Mundurucu civilisé (Civilized Mundurucu)  155

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5.8 Biard, Indienne anthropophage (Female Indian Cannibal)  157 5.9 Biard, La mulâtresse (The Mulatta)  158 5.10 Biard, Portrait et tic de Polycarpe (Polycarpe’s Portrait and Twitch)  160 5.11 Biard, Rameurs sauvages et stupides (Savage and Stupid Paddlers)  162 5.12 Biard, Un botocudos (A Botocudo)  163 5.13 Biard, Femme mundurucue (Munduruc Woman)  165 5.14 Biard, Chef arara (Arara Chief)  167 5.15 Biard, La fête de Saint Benoît dans un village indien (The Festival of Saint Benedict in an Indian Village)  168 5.16 Biard, Prière au soleil dans les forêts de l’Amazonie (Prayer to the Sun in the Forests of the Amazon)  169 5.17 Biard, Fabrication du poison (Manufacture of the Poison)  170 5.18 Biard, Jeune homme à marier (Young Man to Marry)  171 5.19 Wood, The Glove Dance 173 5.20 Biard, Jeune fille nubile (Young Marriageable Woman)  174 5.21 Biard, Musique à la lune (Music to the Moon)  176 5.22 Biard, Opération désagréable (Unpleasant Operation)  177 5.23 Biard, Le revolver (The Revolver)  179 5.24 Biard, Un bain dangereux (A Dangerous Swim)  180 5.25 Biard, Le gouffre de sable (The Sand Chasm)  181 5.26 Biard, Polycarpe étranglé (Polycarpe Strangled)  183

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i began the research that gave birth to this book in the Department of History at Université Laval in Canada. Based on that research, I published the book Romantisme tropical: L’aventure illustrée d’un peintre français au Brésil (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008). Since then, my work has taken a different direction. I not only became a historian, but my research led me to explore the history and public memory of slavery from a transnational perspective. Still, my preliminary work on nineteenth-century European travelogues continued to occupy an important place in my research. Thus, I decided to translate, revise, and rewrite the book that was originally an art history book written in French and transform it into a history book whose main object is a nineteenth-century illustrated travelogue, making my earlier research available to an English-speaking audience. The new book benefited from additional research exploring dimensions that were neglected in the French version, including a greater dialogue with the scholarship published in English and much more comparison with nineteenth-century British travelogues. The preliminary research on which this book is based was developed with the support of various institutions. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) provided me with a generous fellowship. In addition, the Musée de la civilisation (Quebec City, Canada), Université Laval’s Department of History, and the Fonds d’enseignement et de la recherche de

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la Faculté des lettres (Fondation de l’Université Laval) also provided me with generous funding to conduct research in Paris (France). I thank David Karel (1944–2007), who introduced me to the work of François-Auguste Biard and who followed me during the period I started conducting this research. This book is a continuation of his research on francophone artists in North America. During this long journey, I also had the opportunity and pleasure to receive the valuable guidance of Réal Ouellet, who closely followed my research and the different versions of the earlier manuscript in French. Without his contribution—his advice, corrections, and generosity—this work would not have been accomplished. Many other people and institutions contributed to the accomplishment of this project. In France, I am indebted to Laurent Manœuvre (Direction des Musées de France), Claire Constans (Musée du Château de Versailles), and Isabelle Julia (Musées de France), who generously helped me during the period spent in the French archives, libraries, and museums. I am also grateful to the staff of the Archives de la Seine et Marne (Dammarie-lès-Lys) and Musée du Nouveau Monde de la Rochelle. In Brazil, the archivists of Coleção Brasiliana (Fundação Estudar, São Paulo), Coleção Sérgio Fadel (São Paulo), and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro) were extremely helpful. In Quebec City, the support from Lan Tran (Bibliothèque du Séminaire de Québec, Musée de l’Amérique Française) and James Lambert (Division des Archives, Université Laval) was precious. They allowed me to consult and photograph the book Deux années au Brésil when the manuscript was not yet digitized. At Université Laval, I am grateful to Bogumil Jewsiewicki and Laurier Turgeon for their support of the publication of the book in its first French version. Roderick Barman (University of British Columbia, Canada) was one of the greatest supporters of this work. Many years ago, he read the first draft of an article based on the research on which this book is based. He provided me with detailed comments that helped me to revise that article and have it published. Roderick was also one of the readers of the book manuscript published in French. His comments and suggestions were greatly appreciated. I also thank Maria Helena Machado (Universidade de São Paulo). She was a kind interlocutor who encouraged me to work on the English and Portuguese versions of the early French manuscript. Bryan McCann, Jerome Handler, Matthew Restall, Eduardo França Paiva, Luiz Felipe de Alencastro,

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Patrícia Sampaio, and Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali also provided me with comments, patiently answered my questions, and sent me precious references. Transforming a French art history book manuscript into an English history book manuscript was a difficult task. I thank the first, anonymous reader for the positive comments and insightful suggestions of the first version of the manuscript. I thank the two reviewers who revealed their names: Hendrik Kraay (University of Calgary, Canada) carefully read the entire first version of the English manuscript; he gave me detailed suggestions and corrections, which I made my best to incorporate into the second version of the manuscript. The late Elizabeth Kiddy (Albright College, United States) gave me valuable suggestions to improve the book’s organization and its argument. I was not aware of the difficult moment she was experiencing, and she passed away before I had time to say thank you. I also thank the fourth, anonymous reviewer who carefully read the manuscript and provided very positive comments. In particular, I am greatly indebted to Clark Whitehorn, editor-in-chief of the University of New Mexico Press. Clark believed in this project since its beginning and gave me great support when this book was at the proposal stage. He read the first version of each of the chapters and was very supportive through the long review process that required a lot of work and patience. I also thank the wonderful team of the University of New Mexico Press. First of all, I thank my copyeditor, Judith Antonelli, for the careful work she did on this manuscript. I am indebted to Elizabeth Hadas, director emerita; Felicia Cedillos, production editor; and Katherine White, sales and marketing manager, for their contribution to the production of its book and its publicity. Finally, and most important, I am deeply grateful to my husband, Alain Bélanger, who is certainly at the origin of this long project, which began in the late 1990s when we moved from Brazil to Quebec City. He followed with me Biard’s adventures and misadventures in Brazil and France and the United States, giving me unconditional love and support through this very long journey.

i n t roduc t ion

Rediscovering Brazil •

artist françois-auguste biard was an experienced traveler and a popular painter under France’s July Monarchy (1830–1848). In 1858, when he was nearly sixty years of age and the most glorious period of his career was behind him, he left a comfortable life in Paris to travel to Brazil. The main purpose of his journey was to encounter and paint Brazilian Native populations. On arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the painter developed close connections with the Brazilian monarchy, especially the emperor, Dom Pedro II (1825– 1891), who invited him to set up his studio in the royal palace. Biard spent several months in the capital, painting portraits of members of the royal court. But he was not interested in the urban scene. He managed to organize an excursion to the forests of the province of Espírito Santo. However, since this experience did not fulfill his ambitious expectations to meet and paint Brazilian Natives, he embarked on a long expedition in the Amazonia. Biard certainly met several difficulties and many surprises along the way, but his journey in the Amazonia was successful, allowing him to collect numerous artifacts from Brazilian Native groups as well as execute a large number of sketches, photographs, and paintings representing Brazil’s inhabitants, flora, and fauna. Though not mentioning Biard, historian Nancy Leys Stepan emphasizes that between the 1840s and 1860s, the representation of the Amazonian tropics acquired greater importance in the works of numerous travelers and scientists.1 In 1859 Biard was not only among the few Europeans who depicted Amazonian nature in sketches and paintings, but he was

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also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants.2 According to the newspaper Courier du Brésil, the painter brought back from Brazil a collection of artifacts of various “races,” preserved animals (including serpents), and “several stories narrating the dangers or perils faced by the famous traveler.”3 Back in Paris, Biard published in the French magazine Le Tour du monde an abbreviated account of his Brazilian journey, titled “Voyage au Brésil” (Travel in Brazil).4 In 1862 Hachette published the full travelogue under the title Deux années au Brésil (Two Years in Brazil).5 The 680-page book was illustrated with 180 woodcuts, drawn by the French artist and illustrator Édouard Riou from Biard’s originals and engraved by several engravers. The text and engravings in Biard’s travelogue presented to a French audience the daily life of Brazilian society, which heavily relied on slave labor. The painter also described the landscape, flora, and fauna, offering lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the Brazilian rain forest. His entertaining narrative indicates that despite facing numerous challenges, he was willing to overcome any obstacles in order to portray Brazilian Natives in drawings, photographs, and paintings. Several of Biard’s Brazilian paintings are housed in public collections in Europe and in the Americas. Most of his work, however, remained neglected until the mid-1990s, when some exhibitions on French romantic painting and traveler-artists were mounted in France and Brazil.6 In 1995 Phébus published Le pèlerin de l’enfer vert: Rio-Amazonie (1858–1859) (The Pilgrim of Green Hell: Amazon River), reprinting the initial abbreviated version of Biard’s travel account in Brazil that appeared in several issues in Le Tour du monde in 1861. Despite the overall popularity of Biard’s work in nineteenth-century France, his paintings from his Brazilian years remain absent from French public collections. By that time, paintings representing Southern exotic landscapes and populations were neglected, compared to historical painting and works representing Orientalist themes. Except for the oil painting Préparation du poison curare dans la forêt vierge du Brésil (Preparation of Curare Poison in the Rain Forest of Brazil) housed in the Musée du Nouveau Monde in La Rochelle, the surviving paintings are housed in Brazilian private and public collections.7 Although several scholars have examined the works of French and British painters who sojourned in Brazil, Biard’s work in general, and in particular

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the text and engravings of Deux années au Brésil, have been largely ignored.8 Indeed, most art historians pay little attention to illustration, a popular art form usually considered minor art. Among historians, the lack of interest in Biard’s travelogue is perhaps related to its satirical approach, which raises questions about the accuracy of his visual and written representations of Brazil. It is a difficult task to measure the reception of Biard’s travelogue in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro’s press suggests it was received negatively by the Brazilian elites who could read French because the book ridiculed the Brazilian upper classes, who largely depended on the work of enslaved individuals. Moreover, when describing daily events Biard took the opportunity to satirize Brazilian society. Although some French magazines and newspapers praised Biard’s travelogue for its renderings of Brazilian fauna, flora, and natural landscapes, its humorous tone was probably the most important element emphasized in the various comments that were published in the press.9 Nevertheless, the travelogue is not well-known in Brazil. Its Portuguese translation was published only in 1945, but it did not contain any engravings.10 In July 1882, more than one month after the painter’s death, an obituary of sorts was published in the “Folhetim” section of the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Jornal do Comércio. The article stated that Biard, the man who contributed the most to devaluing Brazil in Europe, was dead. According to the author of the article, Biard’s travelogue was full of bloody jests, distasteful insults, and mendacious caricatures. The author recalled that the book contributed to a negative image of Brazil by making it the object of mockery in France, to the point that when he was a student in Paris, his colleagues had laughed at him because he was Brazilian. The author also emphasized that huge posters had announced Biard’s travelogue in Paris, suggesting it was popular. “In the bookstores,” he wrote, “on the occasion of the new year, when I went looking for a picture book to give to a friend, the bookseller ironically offered me Biard’s book. Biard’s travel was our nightmare.”11 The author added that in 1875, thirteen years after the publication of the book, he finally decided to visit Biard, a “terrible enemy of Brazil,” who was then a very old man and lived in the vicinity of Paris, near Fontainebleau. Upon his arrival, the author was led to a “small, exotic, and eccentric room, full of curiosities assembled by the painter during his long pilgrimages in the vast universe,” including some objects from the Amazonia.12

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The encounter between the young Brazilian journalist and Biard reproduced in the newspaper article reflects the general reception of Deux années au Brésil. Whereas it was negatively received by the Brazilian upper classes, who were satirized throughout the book, it became popular in France. In the conversation narrated in the article, Biard admitted that he had caused a lot of harm to Brazil, but he also recognized that he was welcomed in the country with fondness and enthusiasm and that Brazilians were courteous and friendly. Then the painter explained that his goal was to amuse the French, even though he insisted that he only told the truth.13 The approach taken in Deux années au Brésil was unique for its humor. Yet Biard was not the first European traveler to convey a negative image of Brazil. Since the sixteenth century, other European travelers, like André Thevet (1516–1590), Hans Staden (ca. 1529–1579), and Jean de Léry (1536–1613), also described the country as a land inhabited by naked, fierce, and cannibalistic men. These images continued to be disseminated over the centuries. Deux années au Brésil certainly borrowed elements from previous travel accounts, but it also contained several original elements. A closer examination of the travelogue shows that in representing the exotic world of Brazil, Biard sought not only to entertain the French reader but also to offer a reasonably accurate representation of the country and its inhabitants. By mixing his criticism with a heavy dose of humor, he exempted himself from responsibility for the negative portrayals in his narrative. Today, Hollywood movies like Turistas (2006), in which a group of young American tourists undergo all sorts of atrocities at the hands of Brazilian bandits, or Anaconda (1997), in which a National Geographic team struggles with a giant anaconda in the Amazonian rain forest, continue to disseminate similar cultural stereotypes of Brazil and Brazilians. Set in the luxurious forests of the Amazonia or on the beautiful beaches of Rio de Janeiro, these films portray Brazil as an unsafe country, characterized by corruption, criminality, and treacherous inhabitants.14 In this book I analyze Deux années au Brésil by exploring its relations with European travel writing about Brazil. I examine the internal logic of the woodcuts that illustrate the travelogue and their relationship with the text. By comparing and contrasting these illustrations with other nineteenth-­century European accounts, I show that Biard’s travelogue is part of a long tradition of travel writing that started in the sixteenth century and continued during the

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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in several other travelogues by European travelers and artists, including Charles-Marie de La Condamine (1701–1774), Prince Maximilian Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867), Johann Baptist von Spix (1781– 1826), Karl Friedrich Philip von Martius (1794–1868), Hercule Florence (1804– 1879), Henry Chamberlain (1796–1844), Charles Expilly (1814–1886), Daniel Kidder (1815–1891), Henry Koster (ca.1793–1820), James Wetherell (ca. 1823– 1858), Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768–1848), and Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802–1858). My central argument is that Deux années au Brésil innovatively contributes to a genre I call tropical romanticism, a French vision of Brazil and South America. To develop this idea, I follow Stepan’s statement that natural history, anthropology, and medicine were the crucial three areas of knowledge for the definition of tropical nature, and I focus on the influence of the first two areas.15 Indebted to the definitions of tropical nature provided first by natural history and later by the emergence of ethnography and anthropology, tropical romanticism fully developed during the nineteenth century, after the Portuguese royal court settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1808 to escape Napoleon Bonaparte’s invading army and began welcoming to Brazil numerous European artists, scientists, and travelers. In his travelogue Biard casts tropical romanticism as an opposition between European civilization, represented by himself (as the author, narrator, and protagonist of his own text and illustrations), and Brazilian wilderness, represented by the country’s populations of color, the rain forest, and the exotic fauna. Also indebted to exoticism, which during the nineteenth century took several forms in European and North American visual arts and literature, tropical romanticism works as a kind of relativism that defines a Southern country and culture from its relation to a particular Northern observer.16 In addition, as a genre that develops as a particular European gaze at Brazil, tropical romanticism is in dialogue with Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism as a European discourse that helps the West to define itself.17 Ultimately, I argue that the illustrations of nineteenth-century European travelogues, like Deux années au Brésil, contributed to the construction of visual and written discourses about Brazil, in particular the country’s populations of color. The oppositions between Europe and Brazil featured in nineteenth-century illustrated travelogues present elements of

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the twofold image conveyed in Orientalist romantic paintings. As other scholars have observed, in the paintings depicting the French campaign in Egypt, whereas the Egyptian army is depicted as a chaotic body, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army is represented as organized and balanced. In these paintings the Middle Eastern characters do not possess particular physiognomic traits, unlike the Europeans, who are always portrayed in detail.18 The same tendency is visible in nineteenth-century European travelogues in Brazil, which emphasize the moral, physical, and mental superiority of Europeans vis-à-vis local men and women of color.19 Moreover, travel accounts of the second half of the nineteenth century, like Deux années au Brésil, introduce the image of Natives in contact with white civilization. These indigenous individuals are frequently described as corrupt or stupid and as robbers and alcoholics. The European authors of these travelogues, like the painter Biard, very often report that the Natives are not reliable and do not express any kind of gratitude. It is not surprising that these discourses are closely related to elements found in the opposition between the Oriental and the European, since several European travelers who visited Brazil also sojourned in the Middle East and North Africa at some point in their careers. As Said notes when he examines the political discourses by British officials in Egypt such as Arthur James Balfour and Evelyn Baring Cromer, the “Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal.’”20 Consequently, although Brazil is the object of Biard’s travelogue, its written and visual representations reveal a lot about France and Europe and its relation with the Southern tropical world. My analysis of the images and text of Deux années au Brésil and European travelogues about Brazil is multidimensional. I draw from history, literature, anthropology, and art history to study the relations between the text and the illustrations in order to identify the innovative formal and thematic elements of Biard’s travel account. Similarly, I identify the imaginary cultural contents and stereotypes of Brazil that are conveyed by the author, the publisher, and the engravers. This approach allows me to explore ethnographic information embedded in the illustrations, to understand not only the internal mechanisms that drive the construction of particular visual images but also the various representations of Brazil they convey. This approach results from understanding that the images of Brazil

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produced by European artists during the nineteenth century are not merely the product of one individual’s perceptions of an exotic society. These visual representations emerged during a specific period in Brazilian history. In 1815 the country became a kingdom, and in 1822 it proclaimed its independence but preserved the monarchic system. By that time, the construction of a national identity became a salient issue. It was necessary not only to come to terms with the rupture with Lisbon but also to figure out how to incorporate Brazilian Natives and the large African-origin population into a new national narrative. Contributing to the construction of a particular image of Brazil in Europe, Deux années au Brésil clearly continued the tradition of other travelogues, especially Jean-Baptiste Debret’s Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil and Rugendas’s Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil (published under the name Maurice rather than Johann Moritz). Unlike his predecessors, however, Biard emphasized his interactions with local populations of color by making satirical observations. At the same time, he did not comment extensively on Brazilian urban daily life or slavery the way other artists, like Debret and Rugendas, did. Instead, he focused his efforts on describing Amazonian Natives and narrating his adventures in Brazil’s tropical forests. One of the central issues in analyzing the content of a travelogue relates to the process of creating and mechanically reproducing the engravings. Very often the traveler did not produce the illustrations himself. Starting in the sixteenth century, European artists, most of whom had never visited the Americas, drew sketches depicting exotic landscapes and populations based on authors’ oral and written descriptions. In the case of woodcut engravings, the illustrators who transferred the sketches to blocks of wood may or may not be the same traveler or artist who produced the reference sketches. Moreover, once the image was transferred, the process of engraving could also involve various engravers, who carved out the areas that should be white and left untouched the areas to appear in black. After this stage the blocks of wood were covered with ink, then the ink was removed only from the surfaces that were to appear in white. The images were sometimes printed separately and at other times together with the blocks containing the text. This long and complex process thus relied on the collaboration of travelers, artists, illustrators, engravers, and printers, but most of these individuals

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knew nothing or very little about the Americas, so their work gave rise to idealized representations of the Americas. With several different artists and artisans having responsibility for specific stages of the illustration process, it is not surprising that these individuals might sometimes intervene by adding or removing elements from the original drawings. Therefore, the images in travel accounts of the nineteenth century are almost always in dialogue with the text they illustrate—sometimes enhancing it, at other times contradicting it—which is why historians examining these renderings must always consider the written text. Moreover, these images are also in a dialectical relationship with the illustrations in previous travelogues, containing visual images or passages of text that derive from earlier published travel accounts. It is not uncommon that these anachronisms reveal surviving elements of a mythical New World that the first voyages to the Americas in the fifteenth century sparked in the European imagination.21 Comparing the text and illustrations of Deux années au Brésil with other travelogues sheds light on the similarities and differences in various representations of the same subject. Sometimes these visual representations embody a memory that is related to a particular past or to multiple times in the past. Although the various artisans involved in producing a given woodcut may not necessarily consciously evoke a particular period, they are certainly influenced by the images they have seen and the mental schemata they have developed depending on their particular religion, language, and place of birth. Thus it is necessary to examine the images in the context of the long and short duration as well as the peculiarities of the medium of illustration as opposed to media such as painting or photography. The 180 engravings in Deux années au Brésil render a diverse array of subjects, from Brazilian urban life to wilderness to portraits of Native, mixed, and black individuals. In the editorial context, the size of various illustrations is to be considered because it reveals how the publisher and the artist envisioned the importance of the subject being depicted. In particular, my analysis of Deux années au Brésil explores how commentary, description (which sometimes takes the form of inventory), and narrative action appear in the travelogue’s text and images as modes of enunciation. Conceiving commentary as a certain form of interpretation of an observed reality, I emphasize that unlike in many travel accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Biard does not attempt to offer the reader informed

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opinions based on other travelogues and books. Instead he provides criticism through satirical observations. Relying on the works of Louis Marin and Svetlana Alpers, I conceive description as an imitative mode of representation that is intended to mirror in detail a given external reality in which temporal marks are not clearly established. Unlike description, the narrative mode of enunciation offers a personal perspective, usually the narrator’s point of view, by also emphasizing an action that takes place in time, in which very often the emotions of the various characters are featured.22 Their interactions with Biard are intended both to highlight his performance as the hero who plays numerous roles—as artist, traveler, adventurer, naturalist, and ethnographer—and to diminish and ridicule local populations of color by shaping one of the main characteristics of tropical romanticism. The study of the perspective orienting the composition and the roles of the various characters portrayed allows these visual representations to be understood according to a point of view that emphasizes certain elements at the expense of others, inevitably resulting in a fragmentary representation of the objective reality.23 Furthermore, by identifying the characters portrayed and the actions they are performing, it is possible to explore their different positions in the composition in the written narrative as protagonists, antagonists, or adjuvants. Despite being conceived separately, most images and related passages of the text of Biard’s travelogue combine these three modes of enunciation— commentary, description, and narrative action—even though frequently one of them is more prominent than the others. Recurrent oppositions mark the visual representations of Brazil in Biard’s travelogue. In my analysis I argue that Deux années au Brésil and other European illustrated travel accounts contributed to the construction and dissemination of images and cultural stereotypes about Brazil and its populations of color. The engravings depict the painter as a cultivated traveler-artist, embodying the concept of a civilized France. In contrast, Brazil is symbolized by mysterious wildlife and populations of color, who are described as savage and degenerate. These renderings helped to disseminate ambivalent images that reinforce cultural stereotypes and ideas about race and race relations in Brazil.24 This book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1, “A Painter in Search of

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Exoticism,” explores the life and career of François-Auguste Biard during three key periods of French history: the Bourbon Restoration, the July Monarchy, and the period following the Revolution of 1848. It shows how these historical events shaped his career as a painter, a traveler, and an ethnographer, roles that became fundamental in his later works focusing on the populations of the Arctic and of Brazil. An analysis of his formative years reveals the network of contacts that enabled him to become an official artist during the July Monarchy. At the same time, by examining his personal life one can speculate about particular events that may have influenced his decision to travel to Brazil. Throughout the chapter, I shed light on Biard’s artistic production, which was closely associated with the French context in a period when exoticism relating to remote regions of the globe and populations of distant lands was gradually transformed into a widespread and lucrative tendency in western Europe. I argue that Biard’s role as an official artist was intertwined with his endeavors as an adventurer and explorer, which allowed him to obtain royal commissions. By exploring the development of Biard’s professional network and how his activities affected Rio de Janeiro’s main newspapers, this chapter illuminates the context that led the painter to produce an illustrated travel account narrating his Brazilian journey. Chapter 2, “Tropical Romanticism,” examines the visual and written representations of Brazil in nineteenth-century illustrated travel accounts authored by European travelers, scientists, and artists, including Wied-­ Neuwied, Spix, Martius, Florence, Rugendas, Debret, and Biard. I argue that these travelogues, especially those written by French authors, contributed to developing a unique trend of European romanticism, which I call tropical romanticism. This tendency, embodied in a large corpus of written and visual depictions of Brazil’s natural environment and its populations of color, helped to construct an ambiguous image of Brazil in Europe. Drawing from European romanticism, I stress that tropical romanticism is a form of response against the scientific organization of nature and rationalism. Brazil, with its huge populations of color, provided European travelers with a remarkably fertile milieu for the development of tropical romanticism. In this context tropical romanticism can be conceived as a framework for understanding a society that greatly contrasted with European societies, challenging these travelers to reevaluate their own rationality as well as ideas of race and progress.

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Chapter 3, “Black Brazil as Satirical Commentary,” focuses on how the daily life of enslaved individuals is represented in Deux années au Brésil. I explore how these representations are similar to or different from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century visual and written representations of Brazilian slavery in other European travel accounts. Unlike other European travelogues, which present long dissertations supported by data from other sources, Biard develops a particular kind of satirical commentary in both the text and the woodcuts. The analysis of the text and the engravings stresses Biard’s ambiguous position on slavery: he avoided criticizing it openly because of his close relationship with the Brazilian royal family. Indeed, the painter quickly adopted the dominant mentality of the Brazilian elites, who largely relied on the institution of slavery. I argue that satirical commentary in Biard’s travelogue reinforces and sometimes contradicts certain cultural stereotypes associated with black individuals. At the same time, I emphasize that in some passages satire is also employed to ridicule other groups, including Natives and Brazilians of European (e.g., Portuguese, French, and Italian) origin. Chapter 4, “In the Womb of the Rain Forest,” examines the multidimensional depictions of the Brazilian rain forest in Deux années au Brésil. I insist that Biard’s renderings of the Brazilian jungle are part of an established tradition of representations of the tropical forest inaugurated by other European artists, including the Count of Clarac, Debret, and Rugendas. At the same time, I argue that Biard’s written and visual representations of the jungle are innovative mainly because of their important narrative dimension, which becomes more prominent as Biard’s journey progresses. Some engravings show the jungle as a mystical and peaceful place of origin, whereas others present it as a site of conflict, action, danger, and death. Relying on the analysis of the engravings and the text, I argue that the rain forest functions as a stage on which Biard performs the role of an epic hero fighting to survive and vanquish the dangers of the wilderness. I argue that unlike the representations produced by European romanticism that conceive the forest as a sublime and picturesque milieu, in Biard’s travel account the Brazilian jungle is a space that propels his multifaceted character to surface and execute various tasks as a hunter, painter, and naturalist. These several lively and singular elements set up one of the most valuable contributions of Deux années au Brésil to the formation of tropical romanticism. In chapter 5, “Evil Natives,” I look at the multiple representations of Native

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peoples in Deux années au Brésil. Since the sixteenth century, visual and written representations of Brazilian indigenous groups have populated the French imagination. The images of Natives as naked, cannibalistic, ferocious, lazy, and untrustworthy contributed to the development of cultural stereotypes about Brazil’s aboriginal nations. By exploring how Biard represented Brazilian Natives, I shed light on how these various simplified portrayals are constructed through interactions with European individuals and other populations of color, including black and mixed-race men and women. Through the analysis of the text and the engravings, which very often highlight episodes of interracial conflict and cooperation, I show how Deux années au Brésil constructed a novel image of Brazilian Natives, perceived no longer as mere savages but rather as evil, corrupt, degenerate, seductive, and manipulative. Ultimately, I argue that these representations are in dialogue with other nineteenth-century artistic and literary trends, especially Orientalism, that aimed at depicting exotic populations. Along with the representations of black populations and the jungle studied in the two previous chapters, these stereotypical images contribute significantly to the construction of tropical romanticism as a nineteenth-century genre in illustrated travel literature. The book concludes by focusing on the original elements of Deux années au Brésil and how the book relates to a particular European and Brazilian context. In addition to the growing knowledge about nineteenth-century Brazil and its black and Native populations, Biard’s travelogue contributed to the construction of tropical romanticism and helped to foster a particular image of the country as, simultaneously, a land of beautiful landscapes and one filled with dangerous wildlife and untrustworthy Native, mixed-race, and black inhabitants. I suggest that these representations of Brazil continue to be conveyed in more recent artworks, films, travel guides, and websites by perpetuating a legendary image of Brazil as a tropical country full of charm, mystery, and danger—elements that could certainly be explored in further studies. Finally, I would like to note that all translations from French, Portuguese, and Spanish are mine, and I tried to keep them as close as possible to the quotes in the original languages.

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A Painter in Search of Exoticism •

the life and career of the French painter François-Auguste Biard (1799– 1882) corresponds to three key periods of France’s history: the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), the July Monarchy (1830–1848), and the period that followed the Revolution of 1848. Over the years Biard’s activities as a painter were intertwined with his roles of traveler and ethnographer. These influences became visible in his later productions that focused on the populations of the Arctic and Brazil. In this chapter I examine Biard’s formative years in order to reveal the network of contacts that allowed him to become an official painter during the July Monarchy. I contextualize the painter’s travel to Brazil by showing how once he was in the South American country he established professional relations with local authorities and members of the royal court, especially Emperor Dom Pedro II, even as he continued to benefit from the relations he had developed in France. The analysis of Biard’s career and life not only shows how various historical events contributed to shape his activities as an official painter and as a traveler-artist in constant search of exoticism; it also sheds light on how particular events may have influenced his decision to travel to Brazil in 1858. Emphasizing the main objectives of Biard’s travel, I explore the motives that led him to abandon a life of privilege among the royal court in Rio de Janeiro to undertake a long journey through the rain forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia. Throughout the chapter I demonstrate that Biard’s artistic production was closely connected to the French social and

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cultural contexts during a period in which the association of exoticism with distant lands and populations became a popular and profitable trend in western Europe. I argue that his role as an official painter was related to his activities of adventurer and explorer, which he often utilized to obtain royal commissions. By discussing the development of Biard’s professional connections and the repercussion of his activities on Rio de Janeiro’s main newspapers, this chapter provides a closer examination of the context that led the painter to write and publish a travelogue narrating his sojourn in Brazil. An Official Painter

François-Auguste Biard (also known as François-Thérèse or Auguste-François Biard) was born in Lyon on June 29, 1799. His father was Jean Biard, and his mother was Claudine Brunet; both were described as “modest workers from Lyon.”1 Very little information is available about the painter’s youth and formative years. His only biography, written by the French writer Louis Boivin and published in 1842, focuses on the period in which Biard was a very popular artist in France, before his travel to Brazil.2 This monograph, while not based on reliable sources, is a collection of amusing anecdotes. Like other biographers of artists, Boivin emphasizes Biard’s extraordinary abilities and how his peers at Lyon’s Royal School of Fine Arts were jealous of his achievements and versatility. Boivin presents Biard as a largely self-taught painter who suddenly achieved recognition in French artistic circles and had the opportunity to exhibit his work in the Salon in Paris. Despite these flaws, this biography brings to light important information about various significant figures who helped Biard in his early career. More importantly, it gives us clues to the ways in which the painter gradually constructed a self-image based on his courage and adventurism. Biard studied drawing for a few months under Pierre-Henri Révoil (1776– 1842). Révoil was a former student of Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), the famous French neoclassical painter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s court, and became a professor at the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon in 1819. After spending this brief period at an art school, Biard worked for eight months in a factory near Lyon that manufactured religious-themed paintings using the wallpaper technique. Biard’s work in the wallpaper factory might have been

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crucial in his formative years and decisive for his future artistic work. According to Boivin’s biography, the young painter had a great talent for copying images and mastered the techniques of image reproduction. It was therefore no coincidence that very early in his career, in addition to painting, Biard started making sketches to illustrate his own travel accounts. In a period in which woodcut illustration was popular but considered a minor form of art, this decision directed at least part of his production toward a broader audience that was not limited to the elites who visited the Salon and the Parisian museums. Biard’s desire to paint led him to return to the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon several months later. This time he studied with Fleury-François Richard (1777–1852), another student of David’s and an official painter of Empress Joséphine. According to Boivin’s narrative, Biard’s colleagues were again hostile toward him, this time because of his ability to draw human figures. This hostility almost had serious consequences. Because he was eighteen years old and facing military service, Biard sought to win a painting and drawing prize, which would exempt him from conscription. His peers, allegedly resentful of his superiority, reportedly prevented him from participating in the contest. Consequently, Biard astutely took an appointment with Claude Cochet, the interim director of the Royal School of Fine Arts.3 Cochet received the young painter coldly, but as Biard was leaving the director’s office he picked up a flute that was lying on a piece of furniture, and “to demonstrate his abilities . . . he played one or two notes.”4 This gesture completely thawed Cochet’s attitude, and he asked the painter to play a duet with him. Subsequently, Cochet enabled Biard to enter the painting and drawing competition and escape military service. The purpose of this anecdote about Biard’s first benefactor is to promote the painter by emphasizing that the obstacles of daily life were never a problem for him; like the hero of an adventure novel, he always managed to overcome them. Despite constructing a legendary image of a young artist who came from a modest family and became very successful because of his exceptional talents, Boivin admits that Biard’s originality was accompanied by support from important local notables. The most influential of them was certainly Louis-Nicolas-Philippe-Auguste de Forbin (1777–1841), the Count of Forbin, the well-known painter and archaeologist and member of the Academy of

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Fine Arts since 1816.5 The count was a close friend of Richard’s and Révoil’s, Biard’s first professors at the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon.6 Like them, the Count of Forbin was another former student of the famous painter David. During the Directory (1795–1799) he became chamberlain to Pauline Bonaparte, and later he participated in Napoleon’s military campaigns in Portugal, Spain, and Austria. In the Bourbon Restoration he was nominated the director of the Royal Museums and made responsible for the reorganization of the Louvre Museum, which during the allied invasion of 1814 had been stripped of a great number of works of art. In addition, the Count of Forbin founded the Museum Charles X and the Musée du Luxembourg.7 He strongly supported the artists of the time, especially the younger ones, by visiting their studios and following their productions.8 A second notable who played a crucial role in Biard’s career was the Parisian art dealer Alphonse Giroux. Boivin states that Biard and Giroux met by accident. He explains that Biard went to Paris in 1822, accompanied by some of his comrades from the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon who were exhibiting their paintings in the French capital. At the time of the visit, Biard was working on a painting depicting a family of beggars. Giroux was impressed and not only encouraged the painter to complete the work but also promised to buy it. Biard finished the painting and sold it to Giroux for one hundred francs.9 Despite Boivin’s embellished story, however, this meeting was no accident. Giroux was another former student of David’s and a well-known art dealer. Eventually, through the network of his Lyon contacts, Biard found himself among a group of prominent artists, professors, and art dealers, which played a decisive role in launching his career as a successful painter. Moreover, Biard’s connections with the Count of Forbin, Richard, and Giroux suggest that he indirectly participated in the painter David’s network as well. Although Biard did not stay long at the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon and did not study in Paris, he certainly took advantage of relationships that enabled him to integrate quickly into the French art system. Biard’s travels dominated an important part of his artistic production and helped him to construct a successful career, yet he actually lived abroad for only five years.10 His career as a traveler-artist started in 1827, when the French Navy hired him as an art teacher. Soon thereafter he became an officer, and in 1827–1828 he sailed on board La Bayadère, a corvette named in homage to

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Indian dancers. This experience whetted the taste for exoticism that marked his long artistic trajectory and from which he benefited to obtain official commissions. After his travels to Cyprus, Malta, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt, Biard produced several paintings of these countries, most of which were displayed in the Salon exhibitions of 1833, 1838, 1841, and 1843. Some of these paintings depict Mediterranean landscapes, including urban and desert scenes; others are portraits of the exotic inhabitants of the regions he visited. Another two paintings of these regions reveal more of Biard’s humor and ethnographic skills. For example, in Tribu arabe surprise par le simoun ou vent du désert (Arab Tribe Surprised by the Simoon, or Desert Wind), exhibited in the Salon of 1833, he focuses on a very common event in the Sahara Desert and the Arabian Peninsula. The painting shows two men trying to protect themselves from the violent hot and dry wind of the simoon. In contrast, Triomphe de l’embonpoint (Triumph of Overweight), presented in the 1838 Salon of Valenciennes, reveals his satirical vein. The painting ridicules Turkish men, whom he presents as particularly attracted to overweight women.11 In describing this painting, Arthur Dinaux refers to Biard as “an original painter with grotesque ideas who often raised caricature to the level of painting.”12 The scene shows a group of slave merchants evaluating the merits of several European women. Two slender, beautiful French women with graceful, delicate contours are ignored while “a powerful vivandière with robust and rounded shapes is blessed, coveted, and praised by this gathering of connoisseurs.”13 Biard participated in the Salon for the first time in 1827 while he was a naval officer, earning a second-place medal. In 1829 he left the navy and returned to Lyon, whence he traveled to England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and parts of Africa. Few paintings are known from this itinerant period, nor is it known which regions of Africa he visited.14 By this time he had produced a series of paintings representing the Atlantic slave trade that later gave him the misleading reputation of being an abolitionist. These paintings are Traite d’esclaves dans la côte oust de l’Afrique (Slave Trade on the West African Coast), exhibited in the Salon of 1835, and Capture d’un bâtiment négrier par un navire français (Capture of a Slave Ship by a French Ship), exhibited in the Salon of 1846. Despite the titles, there is no evidence that Biard personally witnessed the events depicted in the two paintings. More probably, the paintings were based on oral and written accounts by other travelers.

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Biard’s emergence as a renowned French artist coincided with the rise to power of Louis-Philippe d’Orléans (1773–1850), who was crowned King of the French at the inauguration of the July Monarchy in 1830. Louis-Philippe gradually became the major commissioner of Biard’s paintings. In 1833 the king’s household bought two of the paintings Biard exhibited in the Salon of that year. The first was a painting titled Santon prêchant les Bédouins (Monk Preaching to the Bedouins), which portrayed a gathering of Bedouins in the Saharan Desert. The second, titled Comédiens ambulants (Traveling Troubadours), was purchased for exhibition in the Musée du Luxembourg, which in 1818 had been designated a museum for living artists.15 For a nineteenth-century artist, having a painting purchased by the French state and included in the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg, the first French museum open to the public, was a great and rare accomplishment.16 In Paris’s competitive artistic milieu, such an honor was probably not a result of mere luck. The Count of Forbin, one of Biard’s early benefactors, was most likely involved in the purchase. Indeed, as an organizer of the Salon, the Count of Forbin also recommended (or rather designated) a list of works for purchase by the king’s household.17 When Biard moved to Paris in 1834 he had a growing reputation in the French art system. The proof of his success was that one year later he established his studio at 8 Place Vendôme, which by that time was a distinguished address. Louis Guimbaud describes the address as “a transition . . . between the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which housed the ‘high society,’ and ‘the Chaussée-d’Antin,’ where the upstarts flourished. People settled there when they felt the need to remain within the range of the bankers, without abandoning the hope of someday kissing the hand of duchesses.”18 In other words, the neighborhood gathered members of the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Success and numerous royal commissions marked this phase of Biard’s career. After he was awarded medals in the Salons of 1827, 1836, and 1848, his works were automatically accepted in the Salon without having to undergo the selection process.19 After the Salon of 1837, Louis-Philippe purchased Biard’s painting Duquesne délivre les captifs d’Alger, juin 1683 (Duquesne Delivers Alger’s Captives, June 1683). Foreshadowing Biard’s future works, this painting celebrates the supremacy of the French Navy by depicting the expedition led by the French naval officer Abraham Duquesne (1610–1688),

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who defeated the corsairs of Algiers after bombing that city in 1683.20 To cap this success, Biard received the cross of Knight (chevalier) of the National Order of the Legion of Honor in 1838.21 In early 1839 Biard was among the French painters commissioned by the king to decorate the history galleries of the Palace of Versailles.22 This was a high distinction, since the French state purchased works only from artists who had followed a lengthy path to recognition in the very hierarchical official art system.23 All the works chosen celebrated the splendor of French conquests; among them were two paintings commissioned by Louis-Philippe in 1840 and exhibited in the 1842 Salon: Le Prince de Joinville visite dans le Liban le village Maronite de Héden, 30 septembre 1836 (The Prince of Joinville Visits the Maronite Village of Ehden in Lebanon, September 30, 1836), and Le Prince de Joinville visite le Saint-Sépulcre, 7 septembre 1836 (The Prince of Joinville Visits the Holy Sepulchre, September 7, 1836), today housed at the Museum of French History of the Palace of Versailles. The main subject of these paintings is François-Ferdinand d’Orléans, the Prince of Joinville (1818–1900), the king’s third son. Like his father, the prince, himself a traveler and an artist, encouraged living artists during the July Monarchy. In 1838 the prince traveled to Brazil, and in 1843 he returned to marry a Brazilian princess, Francisca Carolina de Bragança (1824–1898). The marriage tightened the connections between the French and Brazilian monarchies, from which Biard would benefit during his stay in Brazil.24 In subsequent years the king purchased three more of Biard’s paintings, all of which depicted the artist’s official meetings with Queen Victoria.25 In this period of success and popularity, Biard’s studio at Place Vendôme was a meeting place for travelers, artists, and scholars. The studio also served as a gallery to display his works and the artifacts he acquired on his travels around the world.26 Richly appointed and decorated with travel souvenirs and exotic objects, his atelier prefigured the studios of modern artists in Paris and New York. As Sarah Burns explains, the studio was an important tool for late nineteenth-century artists seeking commercial success, especially because in this period there were few art museums and galleries, and bazaars had only recently begun to emerge as part of Paris’s urban life.27 Biard’s studio, a spacious apartment where he received notable guests, helped him to attract commissions and enhance his reputation. Something is known of the contents of Biard’s studio collection. The

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painter probably collected the first artifacts during his youth in his expeditions in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and later added more items during his journeys in the Arctic and Brazil. There are also certain artifacts, such as “two paddles from Australia,” that came from places Biard does not appear to have visited.28 In addition, the inventory of Biard’s estate lists some preserved animals and a collection of minerals and silex.29 From the various written descriptions it is possible to imagine Biard’s studio as a small museum, similar to a cabinet of curiosities. According to an article published in Musée des familles, the studio was covered with sketches “made by the artist in the various parts of the world where he has traveled.”30 In addition, the studio was decorated with thousands of rare objects brought back from various countries, including a sharp Native Alaskan basket cut in the shape of a fish, East Asian vases, feather headdresses purchased on the coasts of Africa, and glass beads that adorned the shoulders of a black female.31 The scope of Biard’s collection is confirmed in the “Foreign Curiosities” section of his studio’s sale catalog. Among the roughly one hundred objects it lists are Botocudo (Brazil) bows; the ax of an Australian chief; a Scottish shield; an Ethiopian spear; several Lapp, Norwegian, Danish, and Spanish knives; an Arab musket; vases and pots from the Amazonia; a Mundurucu (Brazil) war horn; a large mouth harp from Gabon; an iron collar for runaway slaves; an iron mask; a wooden ferule with iron for hitting hands in punishment; several whips; and a huge Bedouin hat.32 Most of the foreign objects in the painter’s collection were probably sold in 1865, because none of them appear in the 1883 sale catalog for his estate.33 Biard’s vast collections show that his official and adventurous enterprises were also related to his ethnographic interest in exotic populations. The Arctic Expedition

In 1839 and 1840 Biard and his partner, Léonie d’Aunet, participated in an official expedition to the Arctic aboard the corvette La Recherche organized by the Commission Scientifique du Nord (Scientific Commission of the North). It is not very clear how the couple was able to join an official expedition. Perhaps Biard’s painting L’embarcation attaquée par des ours blancs (Boat Attacked by Polar Bears), displayed at the 1839 Salon, gave him the leverage to petition the king for an appointment as expedition painter.34

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Although art historian Barbara Matilsky has questioned whether Biard was actually an official member of the expedition, Pedro de Andrade Alvim has cogently observed that the mere possibility of receiving a royal commission was a sufficient financial reward to motivate Biard to join the expedition, officially or otherwise.35 The purpose of the expedition was to expand the findings of a previous mission to the Arctic in 1835–1836. The current expedition was led by the naval surgeon and naturalist Joseph-Paul Gaimard (1793–1858) and financed by King Louis-Philippe.36 In addition to having scientific objectives, the expedition was intended to make a commemorative return to various places Louis-Philippe had visited during his travels to Scandinavia and the polar regions in 1795, when he was Duke of Orleans. Some of the participants in the 1839 expedition were botanist, mineralogist, and geologist LouisEugène Robert (1806–1882); linguist and poet Xavier Marmier (1808–1892); and hydrographic physicist Victor-Charles Lottin (1795–1858). Biard and d’Aunet left Paris at the end of May 1839. Because women were not permitted on navy expeditions, the couple went first to the Netherlands, then to Hamburg, and on to Denmark and Sweden. In Norway they stopped at Christiania (Oslo) and Trondheim before eventually joining the expedition at Hammerfest on July 15, 1840, where d’Aunet was allowed to board La Recherche, circumventing the official prohibition on women. The expedition left Hammerfest on July 27; spent a month exploring the Spitsbergen Islands, Lapland, Finland, and Sweden; then returned through Prussia, Saxony, and along the Rhine. Biard and d’Aunet were warmly received by the monarchs of Sweden and Prussia. In Berlin and Copenhagen, d’Aunet met famous figures, including the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and the noted Danish sculptor Karl Albert Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770–1844).37 As a result, the couple reaped numerous rewards from this participation in the Arctic expedition. In addition to the scientific and historical report written by Gaimard and his officers, an epistolary account, Le voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg (The Voyage of a Woman to the Spitsbergen) was penned by d’Aunet.38 On his return to France, Biard rendered several paintings depicting Louis-Philippe d’Orléans’s travels in Lapland.39 More than a decade later, the painter continued benefiting from his participation in the expedition. In 1851, based on his sketches from the

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expedition, Biard proposed a panorama of Magdalena Bay to decorate the Mineralogy Gallery of the Museum of Natural History of Paris. The painter secured this commission after he wrote a very persuasive letter to the minister of the interior detailing his participation in the scientific expedition and the various subjects he documented during the journey, including the panorama of Magdalena Bay, the aurora borealis, and several portraits of Lapps.40 Despite Biard’s claims of documentary accuracy, the panorama, finally completed in 1861, is embellished with numerous scenes he could not have witnessed. Indeed, most sections depicting polar bear hunts were based on legends of hunting in the Arctic.41 The panorama, composed of a series of oil paintings, is still on display in the Mineralogy Gallery of the Museum of Natural History of Paris. Boivin published Biard’s biography shortly after the painter’s return from the Arctic. In the book the author emphasizes the importance and richness of the artistic corpus resulting from the expedition, emphasizing its documentary, scientific, and ethnographic scope along with the mineral samples and artifacts Biard collected en route. Boivin stresses that the painter’s portraits perfectly depicted Lapps.42 Finally, he reiterates Biard’s desire to continue further explorations around the world in order to compose a complete artistic record of all human races.43 This emphasis on the documentary value of Biard’s artistic production and the importance of his collection suggests the painter’s concern with promoting his work as based on scientific observation. From this perspective, his collection of artifacts constituted evidence that the places and peoples he represented in his works were actually painted from life. By 1842 the painter may have already been considering the fate of his ethnographic collection. In 1865, when he moved from his studio, numerous sketches and artifacts related to the Arctic expedition were sold in the previously mentioned special sale.44 After Biard’s death on June 20, 1882, several more drawings of landscapes and people produced during the Arctic expedition were put up for sale, and this completely dispersed his ethnographic collection.45 During and after the Arctic expedition, two articles narrating Biard’s participation in the expedition were published in the magazine Musée des familles. The first, “En chemin pour le Spitzberg” (On Our Way to the Spitsbergen), written by Samuel-Henry Berthoud, the magazine’s editor, and illustrated by Édouard Wattier (1793–1891), was based on an account

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provided by Biard. It narrated Biard and d’Aunet’s encounter with the famous brigand Oulie Hiélan, a Norwegian character analogous to Robin Hood.46 The second article, published in the “Notes de voyages” (Travel Notes) section of the magazine and titled “Entre Christiania et Drontheim” (Between Christiania and Trondheim), is a short travel account, illustrated with six woodcuts based on Biard’s sketches taken from life.47 According to Berthoud, this short account, written in the first person by Biard, was a complement of notes and drawings excerpted from the painter’s diary of the journey.48 The text mainly describes Norway’s landscapes and people and narrates some adventures experienced while Biard was traveling in the mountains, revealing his satiric vein. On their arrival at “Kongswald” (Kongsvold), for instance, Biard expresses his negative opinion of the locals: “For several hours I am angry. . . . It was not worth leaving promptly in order to wait our horses for so long. The mistress of the post office, a damned old woman, seems quite happy to see us disappointed. It goes from bad to worse.”49 Such deprecatory comments were probably intended to provide readers with a degree of action to compensate for the place’s isolation and lack of picturesque elements. Monotony is quickly replaced by adventure. On the second page of the account, Biard describes how he averted a tragic accident when two horses bolted. He explains that when he was at the top of the mountain, he asked the peasant who was driving the carriage to get off in order to rest the horses, but eventually he realized that it was an unfortunate idea. The painter relied on the peasant’s strength because, according to Biard, the carriage driver seemed like a giant. But soon the driver was overcome, and both Biard and d’Aunet felt the carriage turn upside down. “When I saw my young partner hanging over a frightful precipice,” Biard writes, “I could think only of rescuing her from a terrible and almost inevitable fall that would have suddenly ended our dreams of travel, our planned projects on our return, and our fireside chats.”50 Despite the accident, Biard adds that after he was sure d’Aunet was not hurt, he rushed to the farmer “with the friendly intention of breaking one of his limbs in recompense, but his screams made me think that this was already done.”51 As he will do later in his travelogue Deux années au Brésil, in this short account the painter assumes the role of adventurer-hero by fighting the pitfalls

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of nature—the bolting horses and the mountain—as well as the imprudence of a local inhabitant in order to rescue his beloved companion. After giving the reader a taste of tragedy averted through his rescue of the heroine, the painter and narrator manages to add a touch of his usual humor in the form of his threat to break one of the peasant’s limbs. Like any good travel account, the adventure narrative is accompanied by detailed descriptions. In a later passage, Biard details the Norwegian peasants’ costumes, emphasizing the exactitude of his ethnographic description: “There, as everywhere, I drew the costumes. . . . These are dovetailed outfits that go down to the heel, a vest, and an incredible tie—they are still [dressed so] in 1800! Great whiskers were under their chin, and above all this was a red cap, plus the eternal pipe.”52 Following this passage are two woodcuts showing front and profile views of a peasant dressed as described in the text. Biard’s attempt to provide the reader with an objective description was spoiled, however, by his ethnocentric comment that the Norwegians were at least thirty years behind the French in their mode of dress. Biard also evokes the romance of the Nordic natural landscapes, portraying in words the mystery of the forests whose trees are reminiscent of human arms: “The more we climbed, the more we entered the snowy region, the more the mysterious woods became fantastic, like great ugly arms, toads, crocodiles. It seemed that I heard strange sounds, whistles, shouts! We completely left the vegetation and we entered the snow.”53 He then concludes his short travel account with a romantic image of his and d’Aunet’s plans to visit places described by a noted French writer: “Tomorrow we will see Drontheim [Trondheim] and the Munckholm[en] castle, which became famous thanks to the Han d’Islande by Mr. Victor Hugo. We have brought this book, and we will read from it on the spot where the poet has placed the scene of his novel.”54 At this time, Biard could not imagine that in the near future the legendary poet and novelist would become much more than a very close friend of his future wife. The Arctic expedition not only marked the apex of Biard’s career but also brought his young partner to the foreground. Léonie d’Aunet shared the painter’s life during the most glorious period of his career and became famous as the first woman to travel to Spitsbergen. D’Aunet’s date of birth is disputed, but she was probably sixteen or seventeen years old when she moved into Biard’s apartment at the Place Vendôme in 1836, when Biard was

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in his late thirties.55 The youthful and intelligent d’Aunet certainly helped the painter to expand his circle of notable male friends and to complete his image as a successful artist who was able to attract a young and beautiful woman. When the couple returned from the Arctic expedition at the end of 1839, d’Aunet was pregnant. On July 3, 1840, the couple legally married, and their first child, MarieHenriette Biard, was born in Paris on October 14, 1840.56 In the spring of 1841 the Biards rented a house outside Paris in the commune of Samois. There they befriended a neighbor named Fortunée Hamelin, who traveled in noted circles, numbering among her friends the poets François-René Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo.57 In a letter of October 24, 1842, Hamelin reported that Biard was very jealous of Hugo.58 At some point, exactly when is unknown, Hugo and Léonie started having an affair.59 In the spring of 1843 Biard purchased land in Samois, where he built a new house that he designed himself.60 The Biards gave a costume party to celebrate the completion of the house, and Hugo was one of the guests. Biard probably first met Victor Hugo in Paris at the home of his friend, the sculptor JeanJacques Pradier, known as James Pradier (1786–1847). Hugo was included on a list of intimates who regularly visited Pradier in 1844, and Biard was listed as a friend of the family.61 Hence, during the 1840s, when Biard was an official painter in the court of King Louis-Philippe, he and Hugo had a common personal and professional network and maintained courteous relations.62 Several authors, including Guimbaud, argue that this party inspired Hugo’s poem “La Fête chez Thérèse,” published in Les contemplations (1856); they point out that the poem’s title contains one of the given names of the painter, François-Auguste Thérèse Biard.63 The poem might also refer to the painter’s monkey (Mouniss) and dog (La Poune): “A timpanist monkey riding a dog / . . . The monkey brought ice to the valet / The latter, gallant draped in a whimsical cape.”64 Mouniss and La Poune were well-known characters in the studio at Place Vendôme, mentioned in Berthoud’s 1839 article. According to Berthoud, the monkey walked on his hind legs and wore a very handsome bellboy’s costume with breeches and gaiters accented in velvet, a red vest with gold buttons, a blue livery, and shining stripes on all seams: “Then under his cocked hat, a strange face showed itself, exceptional, unique.”65 Moreover, Berthoud uses the words of Biard, who explains that among “the playful habits [the

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monkey] used to have; there is only a very strong tendency to pull the tail of my little dog La Poune and take revenge, by tormenting him, because of the favor the nasty little dog enjoys at home.”66 The primary sources show that in April 1844 Léonie Biard requested a separation from her husband. She might have already left the couple’s home, because she declared that she was living in the residence of Berthoud, who had been a witness to her marriage.67 At the time, Léonie was pregnant with her son, George, who was born on August 24, 1844.68 Roughly a year later, on July 4, 1845, Biard, accompanied by a policeman, surprised Léonie in flagrant adultery with Hugo in a room in the Passage Saint Roch. Because adultery was a crime at the time, both lovers should have been sent to prison. Hugo claimed immunity from prosecution because of his title as a peer of France and remained free, but Léonie was incarcerated in Saint-Lazare Prison, an institution for female thieves, criminals, and prostitutes.69 She remained in prison until September 1845 and was then transferred to the Augustines Convent, where she remained for six months.70 The newspapers widely reported the scandal, and several notable figures of the time, including the writer Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), the sculptor James Pradier, the literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804– 1869), and the composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849), commented on the scandal in their correspondence.71 On August 14, 1845, the Tribunal of the Seine ratified the legal separation of the Biards.72 Although the scandal affected the lives of all three people, Léonie suffered the most. She lost custody of her two children as well as her social position. After her release, she started a career as a writer. In 1852 an account of her travel to Spitsbergen was published in the magazine Revue de Paris, and in 1854 her complete travel account, Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg, was published by Hachette. She also published several novels and contributed to newspapers and fashion magazines.73 The scandalous end of Biard’s marriage had mixed effects on his career. The years immediately after the separation did not favor him. He did not participate in the Salon of 1845, and the works he exhibited in the Salon of 1846 were severely criticized by Charles Baudelaire.74 On the one hand, his name remained overshadowed by Hugo’s, and he has been neglected in French art history. On the other hand, gossip surrounding the scandal increased his fame by forever connecting his name to one of the most famous French personalities of all time.

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The Revolution of 1848, which brought about the fall of King LouisPhilippe and the end of the July Monarchy, opened a new phase in Biard’s career. Even though the artist lost his royal commissions, his actions at the end of the regime showed how quickly he was able to adapt to the new political context. Deprived of royal commissions, Biard executed a painting portraying the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, which was proclaimed that year. According to Guimbaud, the painter remembered having executed and sold, by 1835, a painting depicting the slave trade. He simply updated the sketches of that painting and produced a painting depicting the emancipation, which he brought to the writer Alphonse de Lamartine. Guimbaud humorously regrets that “the history does not say whether or not the biographer of Toussaint Louverture purchased the new masterpiece.” 75 If this anecdote is accurate, Lamartine’s correspondence does not contain any mention of this painting, and art historians dispute whether it was commissioned by the French state or the poet recommended its purchase.76 The outcome, however, was that L’émancipation des noirs (The Emancipation of Slaves) was purchased by the French state on June 11, 1849, right after that year’s Salon.77 This painting and the two previous works portraying the Atlantic slave trade might suggest that Biard was an abolitionist painter, but the evidence does not support this claim. It is more likely that African enslavement attracted his attention because of his ongoing search for exoticism. Moreover, as a historical painter, he always sought to record important moments in French history along with popular themes. The end of the July Monarchy did not prevent Biard from continuing to exhibit his work every year in the Salon. In 1855 he also participated in the Paris World’s Fair, which took place on the Champs Elysées. However, with the scandal that ended his marriage and the fall of the July Monarchy, his period of great success was behind him. Even though he remained very active, he was faced with a new generation of young painters whose works were very different from his own.78 It was necessary to find new adventures that would provide him with ways to have his work noticed again. Biard’s Brazilian Journey

What motivated Biard to travel to Brazil? Very little information is available to explain why and under what circumstances the painter decided to travel

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to the country in 1858. The only available sources related to his trip are two editions of his travel account, Deux années au Brésil.79 If this source is accurate, Biard initially considered traveling to Brazil because he had to vacate his apartment at Place Vendôme, where he had spent most of his life as an artist. “On each of my travels,” he wrote, “new objects came along to increase my little museum, and as self-esteem fits everywhere, I was proud to say that I had if not the most beautiful studio of Paris, at least the most curious. How could I think that one day a landlord would destroy with a word something built with so much toil and care!” 80 For a renowned and senior artist like Biard, being forced to leave his Paris studio at fifty-nine years of age was certainly a difficult episode that seemed to confirm that his career was in decline. The studio at Place Vendôme was the symbol of his period of glory and success. It was not only where he produced his most important paintings but also where he organized and promoted his work and displayed his collection of artifacts from all over the world. Frequented by artists, scientists, and intellectuals who visited him to discuss current events, paintings, exhibitions, novels, and travels, the studio was where he fulfilled his commissions for the French state and wrote his travelogues. Biard certainly knew the growing illustrated travel literature on Brazil. As noted earlier, during their trip to join the Arctic expedition, Biard and d’Aunet met Humboldt. The Prussian naturalist had not only traveled all over Latin America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; during the July Monarchy he commuted between Berlin and Paris, where he had been appointed as ambassador by the king of Prussia. Moreover, Biard was certainly familiar with the illustrated travelogues Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil by Jean-Baptiste Debret and Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil by Johann Moritz Rugendas, and it is possible that he met them during his glorious years in Paris.81 In addition, for several years Biard had maintained direct and indirect relationships with former members of the French artistic mission, including the Swiss engraver Charles-Simon Pradier, James Pradier’s brother. Finally, until 1889, when the Brazilian Republic was proclaimed, relations among the Portuguese, Brazilian, and French monarchies were very close. As previously mentioned, these connections were strengthened during the July Monarchy, when the Prince of Joinville traveled to Brazil, and when he five years later

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returned to marry Francisca Carolina de Bragança, the daughter of Dom Pedro I and the sister of the then Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro II.82 Brazil was most likely already in the painter’s imagination, as it was for a whole generation of nineteenth-century French travelers and artists. Biard does not explain in detail the practical arrangements for his Brazilian journey. Instead he gives the impression that the preparations were straightforward.83 Yet in one passage of Deux années au Brésil, he mentions that his preparations for traveling to Brazil involved not only packing his luggage and moving out of his apartment but also requesting several letters of recommendation from French officials. Because he financed his travel himself, he brought with him several sketches and engravings to sell in Brazil. These preparations secured the support of French citizens living in Rio de Janeiro, including the French consul, Théodore Taunay (1797–1881), which allowed him to stay in the country and finance a long journey through the Amazonia. Despite the long-standing relations between France and Brazil, in the opening pages of his travelogue Biard describes his compatriots’ surprise and mockery when they learned about his new adventure: “Don’t go to Brazil, another one told me. Who goes to Brazil? We don’t go to Brazil, unless we are appointed emperor. Were you appointed emperor of Brazil?” 84 In the mid-nineteenth century, Brazil was the only monarchy in the Americas, and for several decades it was considered a major exotic destination. Biard traveled to the French port of Le Havre on April 5, 1858, then sailed across the English Channel and along the Thames River to London. From there he took a train to Southampton. On April 9, 1858, he embarked for Brazil on the steamer Tyne. The voyage took about a month, with stops in Lisbon, the Madeira Islands, Tenerife (Canary Islands), and the Brazilian provinces of Pernambuco and Bahia. On May 5, 1858, the Tyne entered the Guanabara Bay in southeast Brazil.85 The itinerary shows that the ports of Recife (Pernambuco), Salvador (Bahia), and Rio de Janeiro, as well as Buenos Aires (Argentina), were the main entryways for European immigration to South America. Biard sojourned in Rio de Janeiro until November 2, 1858. From there he headed to the province of Espírito Santo, where he remained until April 1859.86 He then returned to Rio de Janeiro until June 23, when he set off toward the Amazon rain forest, passing through the provinces of Bahia,

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Pernambuco, Paraíba, Maranhão, and Pará.87 Biard left the city of Belém in Pará in August 1859 and went to the province of Amazonas. First he settled in the city of Manaus, which was then the provincial capital, and from there he started his long journey down the Amazon River. When he returned from the Amazonia, he left Brazil from Belém on December 6, 1859, on board the U.S. steamer Frederic Deming.88 On January 7, 1860, he was in New York City, and on January 25 he was already on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.89 On his return to France, Biard published the travel account Deux années au Brésil. The travelogue is written in chronological order according to the progression of his voyage from France to the Amazonia. In chapter 1, Biard describes his Atlantic crossing from England to Brazil on board the Tyne and depicts his travel companions with humor. But the narrative contains more than amusing anecdotes. The painter also gives details about the steamer’s itinerary and in particular describes the exotic landscapes he observed on the voyage. When the Tyne arrived at the island of Madeira, Biard described it as a new paradise because of its climate and exuberant flora.90 The voyage continued via Tenerife and Cape Verde until, on May 1, 1858, the Tyne eventually reached the port of Recife in the northeast Brazilian province of Pernambuco. Biard’s narrative of his arrival in Brazil conveys his emotion on encountering the distant world: “My attention redoubled: the forms of the trees stood out from the background of the sky like dark spots floating in the air. I stood up, not breathing—no, I am not mistaken, I have America in front of me, those black dots are the tops of the palm trees whose trunks disappear into a mirage, an effect of the heat.”91 However, the novelty of the perception that projects Biard into an unknown world paradoxically produces in him a form of nostalgia. While observing the sky from the ship’s deck, he realizes how far he is from Europe: “The Polar Star had disappeared some days ago; several among us would never see it again. This thought made me sad. Despite my mood, by seeing these new stars, I felt more vividly the distance that separated me from those I left behind, and I promised to myself to rejoin them before long.”92 He certainly must have worried that he might never be able to return home, because later in the travelogue readers learn that at least one of his travel companions died of yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro.93 As in other travelogues describing distant lands, when emphasizing the

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singular and picturesque elements of Brazil’s exotic environment and landscape, Biard often employs the terms new and for the first time. Yet it is not clear whether his early inventory of Brazil’s singularities is entirely the result of original, firsthand, personal observation or if he develops his descriptions by relying on information provided by other travelers. Although the approach of the Brazilian coastline raises a contemplative euphoria, the view of Salvador (Bahia) provokes disappointment. Fog and rain prevent him from seeing the city, the surrounding natural environment, and the sunny beaches he had been imagining. When the fog disappears and the rain stops, however, Biard is clearly dissatisfied with the reality of what he sees from the ship, even though at this stage the readers are not informed of the unpleasant elements that evoked his negative reaction: “All that I saw did not give me an idea of what I was looking for in Brazil; we will see if I change my mind on approaching closer, but I fear that it will not happen. Effectively, I remained with the same feelings before and after.”94 Yet on the next page the painter mentions seeing a hummingbird hovering over an orange tree, which he interprets as a good omen. He again describes the sensations evoked by the new context using the phrase for the first time: “Passing in front of a garden, I saw for the first time a hummingbird fluttering over an orange tree. I saw it as a happy omen, it reconciled me with myself and with my hopes; it was this that first really announced the New World to me.”95 Biard adds that he did not care about the theater, the stock market, and other public monuments. Instead, he notes that his main interest was starting his hunt for insects, birds, and reptiles, since he did not come to Brazil looking for cities.96 This observation makes clear that Biard has traveled to Brazil to observe and depict the country’s exotic natural environment, with its fauna and colorful flora, and its populations of color. Even though he passed his first months in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, his time in the city was intended to establish contacts with the local authorities in order to finance and organize his expedition to the Brazilian rain forest. After a three-day stop in Salvador, the Tyne finally anchored in the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro. Biard’s first impression of this city was even more disappointing than that of Salvador. In Rio, the painter stayed in the Hotel Ravot, where he shared a filthy room, infested with mosquitoes and

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cockroaches, with a young French journalist named Altève Aumont (1835– 1860), who had been appointed “against his will” as correspondent for the Revue des races latines in Rio de Janeiro and was also the editor-in-chief of the French newspaper L’écho du Brésil et de l’Amérique du Sud.97 Nevertheless, Biard’s first urban experiences in Rio de Janeiro produced humorous stories. On his first walks around the city’s downtown area, he quickly realized that the light-colored clothes he brought from Paris did not fit the local context, since in Rio de Janeiro everybody was dressed in black, according to the European fashion.98 During his first days in the Brazilian capital, however, he was less concerned with adapting to the new environment than with seeking out prominent residents, especially Europeans, who could help him in the next steps of his journey. Soon after his arrival, Biard introduced himself to local notables, making use of the various letters of recommendation he brought from Paris. The first letter was addressed to the French consul, Théodore Taunay, one of the five sons of the painter Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, who had been a member of the French artistic mission of 1816.99 This first contact suggests that in Paris Biard had been in touch with individuals connected to the mission. In his travelogue, the painter expresses his gratitude to Consul Taunay several times.100 Taunay became Biard’s great benefactor during his stay in Brazil, assisting the painter in several ways. Taunay wrote letters of recommendation to various Brazilian authorities. An early letter was addressed to Paulo Barbosa da Silva (1790–1868), the butler of the royal palace, requesting an audience with Emperor Dom Pedro II.101 At the time, Barbosa was an influential man who administered the palace’s finances and oversaw the various official ceremonies in which the emperor had participated since 1841. Several months later, when Biard wrote from the forests of Espírito Santo that he was in need of money, Taunay sent him some. The important support the painter received from French residents in Rio de Janeiro indicates that this community remained important during the second half of the nineteenth century and was connected to the remnants of the French artistic mission. Biard also brought from Paris a letter of recommendation addressed to Luísa Margarida de Barros Portugal (1816–1891), the Countess of Barral. Born in Bahia and raised in France, she was a close friend of the emperor’s sister, Princess Francisca de Bragança. She became the tutor

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of the young princesses Isabel and Leopoldina, and according to Roderick Barman, soon after her appointment she developed what he calls an amitié amoureuse with Emperor Dom Pedro II.102 Shortly after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1858, Biard met the emperor. The Brazilian-born monarch was the grandson of Portugal’s King Dom João VI and the son of Brazil’s Emperor Dom Pedro I. In 1831, Dom Pedro I abdicated the throne to return to Portugal and recover the Portuguese throne for his daughter Dona Maria da Glória (1819–1853); in doing so he left his other children in Brazil: Crown Prince Dom Pedro and the princesses Dona Januária (1802–1901) and Dona Francisca. Crown Prince Dom Pedro was proclaimed Dom Pedro II, emperor of Brazil, that year at age five, and he was crowned in 1841.103 Biard was surprised at the emperor’s warm and unpretentious demeanor. Dom Pedro II was a cultivated man who spoke several languages, including French. He was also an amateur student of art, science, and literature and expressed a particular interest in Biard’s journey to the Arctic. The painter explains that the emperor “had the great kindness to ask me what my intentions were in coming to Brazil. He asked me many questions about my travels, and seemed to take a genuine interest in my answers and particularly those dealing with the areas of the North Pole.”104 During this first meeting the emperor also expressed his interest in seeing the sketches Biard had brought from France. Moreover, he invited the artist to stay in the Imperial Palace (Paço Imperial), the official headquarters of the monarchy in downtown Rio de Janeiro, and to establish his studio there. During the cooler months, the royal family resided in São Cristóvão Palace at Quinta da Boa Vista in Rio de Janeiro, and during the summer the family moved to Petrópolis Palace in the neighboring city of Petrópolis. An amateur artist himself, Dom Pedro II often received foreign artists as guests in the Imperial Palace, including the Austrian sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich (1798–1872) and the Neapolitan painter Alessandro Cicarelli (1810–1874). The Imperial Palace had been built in 1743 as the residence of the governor of Rio de Janeiro, and in 1763, when the city became the capital of the viceroyalty of Brazil, the building became the viceroy’s residence. When the Portuguese royal family moved to Brazil, it initially resided in the Imperial Palace, from 1808 to 1820. Since 1822, when Dom Pedro I had proclaimed Brazil’s independence, the Imperial Palace had been the symbol of the

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political power of the newly emerging Brazilian state. At the time of Biard’s arrival in 1858, the building continued to be the official headquarters of the Brazilian monarchy and served as the emperor’s workplace. Most official ceremonies and commemorations were held there, and from time to time the royal family was in residence. Even though Biard remained in Rio de Janeiro for six months, about onethird of the time he spent in Brazil, few pages of Deux années au Brésil are dedicated to describing the city and narrating episodes of urban daily life. Probably to avoid causing offense, the painter comments only very briefly on any issues relating to the various members of the royal court, especially the emperor, whom he describes as “invariably good and gracious, and if I do not say everything I think on this matter, it is also my respect for him that holds me back.”105 Biard needed the support of the royal court to obtain commissions that would allow him to pay for his excursion in the northern areas of Brazil. Shortly after Biard arrived in Rio de Janeiro, local newspapers started publishing short articles about his presence in the city. On May 9, 1858, the French newspaper Courrier du Brésil, published in Brazil, reported the arrival of the French painter on the steamer Tyne on the previous day: “Brazil with its splendor, well known by artists and travelers, attracted the attention of this man of talent; it is a good fortune for Brazil.”106 On May 25, the Diário do Rio de Janeiro published a notice stating, “The noted French painter of the House of Orléans is in this court. We learned that he already went to the palace and was very well received by His Majesty the Emperor, to whom he presented some of his works.”107 This news undoubtedly helped the painter to obtain commissions from various prominent members of Rio de Janeiro’s elite who wished to have their portraits made by a famous French artist. Biard accepted the emperor’s offer to establish his studio in the Imperial Palace, which inserted him into the life of the royal court. During the next months he painted a profusion of portraits commissioned by members of the court and executed numerous sketches and paintings of the city and its inhabitants. Gradually he received official support, and his work began being promoted in the local newspapers. Another short notice in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro in May 1858 urged readers to visit the palace, where some of Biard’s paintings were on display. The journalist referred to Biard as the painter of the Orleans family. According to him the elites of the city should visit the

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gallery because the “prize that most satisfies the soul of an artist, the reward that compensates him for his work and study, is the enthusiasm that his production raises among the people.”108 Biard’s name continued to appear in the newspapers for the next weeks. One month later, the same journalist wrote of visiting the Imperial Palace to see Biard’s paintings with his own eyes: “I can only advise you also to seek to visit him; in Mr. Biard you will meet besides a renowned artist a lovely gentleman and a traveler who tells with a lot of esprit the episodes of his travels around the world.”109 The publication of these various notices shows the painter’s determination in promoting himself and his work among the local influential personalities who might commission and buy his works. In a letter of July 1858 to a friend in France, Biard mentions that Brazil is an “artistic country.” He states that his privileged status enabled him to earn fifty thousand francs through selling engravings he brought from Europe and painting portraits.110 This leads to the conclusion that the painter traveled to Brazil with very modest means but was certain that once he was in Rio de Janeiro his French acquaintances would secure him the protection of the monarchy and enable him to earn the necessary revenue to finance his expedition to the Brazilian rain forest. Painting portraits of members of the court offered Biard money and social prestige. Nevertheless, his primary purpose was to finance his travel to the rain forest and his eventual return to France, as he explains in his travelogue: “I was eager to finish the portraits of the empress and the princesses. I refused all commissions. I had just one goal: to travel, study, and return to France as soon as possible. . . . However the time of freedom did not arrive yet.”111 He adds that the emperor, after expressing his appreciation of the portraits in progress, informed Biard that he should now paint his portrait. Four portraits by Biard representing the Brazilian nobility and elite are today housed in the Museu Paulista (São Paulo, Brazil): Retrato da Viscondessa de Indaiatuba (Portrait of the Countess of Indaiatuba), Retrato do Visconde de Indaiatuba (Portrait of the Viscount of Indaiatuba), Retrato do Barão de Iguape (Portrait of the Baron of Iguape), and Retrato do Doutor Pompeu do Amaral (Portrait of Doctor Pompeu of Amaral). Moreover, while in Rio de Janeiro Biard also painted Retrato de Senhora (Portrait of a Lady), part of the collections of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.

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It portrays Maria Eugênia Lopes de Paiva, the daughter of the prominent minister of foreign affairs, Caetano Maria Lopes Gama (1795–1864), the Viscount of Maranguape.112 Although it is not known why the title of the portrait does not identify the model, Barman points out that in the 1850s or 1860s, Emperor Dom Pedro II had a relationship with Maria Eugênia Lopes de Paiva, who was one year his junior. Barman states, “She married twice and was known successively as ‘Mariquinhas Guedes,’ after her first spouse, who died in 1855, and ‘Madame Jones,’ after her second husband, whom she married in 1861.”113 The full-body portrait of Mariquinhas Guedes shows a young white woman wearing a sophisticated long, low-cut white dress. The painting emphasizes the interplay of transparencies and textures between the woman’s white dress and her black lace veil. The vases of flowers on the painting evoke femininity. Despite the luxuriant landscape of Rio de Janeiro in the background, Biard explains that he executed this painting “of a charming and witty Brazilian, the daughter of the minister of foreign affairs” in his studio.114 It is very probable that she posed in his studio in the Imperial Palace and that he added the background landscape later. Biard also painted a portrait of the two royal princesses, titled variously Princesses impériales du Brésil (Imperial Princesses of Brazil) or La princesse Léopoldine feuilletant un album de Redouté et la princesse Isabel (Princess Leopoldina Flipping an Album of Redouté and Princess Isabel). The posing sessions took place in the emperor’s library at the São Cristóvão Palace.115 In the foreground of the painting are the two young girls; Princess Leopoldina (1847–1871) sits on a bench leafing through a botany book while the young Princess Isabel (1846–1921), leaning on the back of the bench and facing the viewer, observes the scene with a discreet smile. The two princesses wear identical yellow dresses, represented in detail, that contrast with the blue of the sky. The botany album and the elegant dresses are distinctive marks of a cultured Brazilian monarchy. Along with the luxuriant plants at the left and the landscape in the background, these elements create a contrast between nature and civilization. Two woodcuts in Deux années au Brésil reproduce Biard’s portraits of the emperor and the empress. Both oil paintings were executed in Rio de Janeiro in 1858 and were exhibited along with the painting portraying the imperial princesses in the Salon of 1880 as part of a set of paintings titled Souvenirs de Voyage (Travel Souvenirs). The first woodcut, Portrait de

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Figure 1.1.  Portrait de

l’Empereur du Brésil, d’après le tableau de Biard (Portrait of the Emperor of Brazil, after a Painting by Biard), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard” and Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 103.

l’Empereur du Brésil, d’après le tableau de Biard (Portrait of the Emperor of Brazil, after a Painting by Biard), is a full-body portrait of Dom Pedro II dressed in his royal costume (see figure 1.1). The engraving is based on the oil painting, in which the young monarch wears the traditional long beard. The emperor stands in the center of a room whose luxurious appointments are emphasized by the contrast between the red rug and the blue curtains. The richness of gold objects, including the throne and the royal scepter, designate the subject’s rank. As Lilia Moritz Schwarcz has observed, the image of Dom Pedro II, as well as the various rituals of the Brazilian monarchy at the time, combined local and foreign elements.116 His royal costume contained several local tropical symbols, including coffee, tobacco, and cocoa, whereas his jacket and his

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shoes were made of white satin decorated with branches embroidered in gold. The green royal robe was decorated with armillary spheres, dragons, stars, and branches of gold embroidery. Green is the color of the House of Bragança (the emperor’s house), and gold is the color of the House of the Two Sicilies (the empress’s house). Finally, the most exotic element of the costume was a red collar made of toucan feathers, which according to Dom Pedro II paid homage to Brazil’s indigenous populations. In the course of his reign and until the 1870s, most portraits showed the emperor standing, wearing his royal uniform and holding his scepter. Biard’s portrait contains several elements in common with a later painting of 1872, titled Dom Pedro na abertura da assembléia geral (Dom Pedro in the Opening of the General Assembly), by the Brazilian artist Pedro Américo de Figueiredo e Mello (1843–1905). In his travelogue, Biard explains that his painted portrait of the emperor was staged and that the costume and various objects were added after the posing session. The original painting represented the emperor in simple attire, and then the painter asked Dom Pedro II to lend him his ceremonial costume, which he wore only in very special official ceremonies. The black employees of São Cristóvão Palace brought Biard “several tin trunks (the method commonly used in Brazil to prevent insects), containing the green velvet robe lined with gold cloth, the white silk tunic, as well as the belt, the scepter, and everything that I needed.”117 The painter intended to bring the portrait to be exhibited in Paris, as he effectively did some years later. Although the portrait shows the emperor dressed in an official costume, by 1870 this kind of stereotyped representation of Dom Pedro II was replaced with a more modern image of the emperor wearing a lounge suit. Schwarcz reminds us that this image of the “citizen-monarch” was inspired by the image of Biard’s benefactor, King Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, and was intended to bring the emperor closer to the Brazilian population when the abolitionist movement was gaining a presence in Brazil.118 The second woodcut, Portrait de l’Impératrice du Brésil (Portrait of the Empress of Brazil), based on the oil painting Impératrice du Brésil (Empress of Brazil), shows a young woman with delicate physical features (see figure 1.2). In the engraving, the room décor—including the curtains, draperies, rugs, and table on which the empress’s hand is placed—is emphasized, even though in the oil painting, the décor is even more vivid because of the contrast between

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Figure 1.2.  Portrait de l’Impératrice du Brésil (Portrait of the Empress of Brazil), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard,” Jean-FrançoisAuguste Trichon, and Léon Chapon, in Biard, Deux Années au Brésil, 69.

the empress’s cream dress ornamented with golden embroidery and the red draperies in the background. A comparison of this engraving with other portraits of the empress shows that her face and body were slimmed. Unlike in Biard’s other portraits and paintings, in which the characters’ various physical traits were exaggerated to create a caricatural effect, in this portrait he rather embellished the appearance of the model, who, according to several contemporary witnesses, was not characterized by beauty. Empress Teresa Cristina (1822–1889), the princess of the Two Sicilies, descended from the Bourbons through three grandparents and from the Habsburgs through one grandmother. She was four years older than the

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emperor, who knew her only from a small portrait, and even the wedding was performed by proxy. When the empress arrived in Rio de Janeiro in September 1843, the emperor must have been disappointed to discover that the small portrait sent before the wedding did not correspond with reality.119 In Deux années au Brésil, Biard emphasizes that the empress commissioned her own portrait.120 The posing sessions took place in the emperor’s library in São Cristóvão Palace.121 The portrait was described in Rio de Janeiro newspapers. In an article published in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro the painting is praised as a work of great merit: “The countenance’s similarity, the natural position, the well-finished details, the smart mixture of colors, the truth of the shadows, the beauty of the coloring, finally everything is combined in this beautiful portrait to make it worthy of the august person it represents.”122 Moreover, according to the author of the article, “the artist excelled in giving the portrait the reflections of a beautiful soul and the smile of kindness that in the Empress’s countenance is bound to an air of majesty.”123 Despite these compliments, Biard’s painting and his engraving were very similar to other images of Empress Teresa Cristina, including a portrait painted by Victor Meirelles (1832–1903) in 1864. The various visual representations portray the empress in the same setting, in a similar position, and in the same official costume and jewelry. Even though there were posing sessions in the São Cristóvão Palace, it is likely that Teresa Cristina’s portrait, like that of the emperor, was not an original painting but rather a painting conveying an official image disseminated at the time. During the short stay of Biard in Rio de Janeiro, he participated in several activities organized by the local artistic community. He reported that the various newspapers treated him with benevolence.124 On September 26, 1858, the Diário do Rio de Janeiro announced that an exhibition of paintings and art objects was being held in São Pedro de Alcântara Theater for “the benefit of the Livramento and Barbonos orphanages, bearing in mind that this initiative is indirectly aimed at the development of fine arts at the court.”125 On paying an admission fee the visitors would receive a raffle ticket for one of the works on display, which were painted by Biard and several other prominent painters like August Muller (1815–1883), Maximiliano Mafra (1823–1908), Agostinho da Motta (1824–1878), François-René Moreaux (1807–1860), Claude Joseph Barandier (1812–1867), Henri Nicolas Vinet (1817–1876), Henrich Fleiuss (1823–1882), and Jules Le Chevrel (1810–1872).

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Biard himself mentions his involvement in the local artistic activities. One day, when he was returning from a tour of the areas surrounding Rio de Janeiro, he was surprised by a group of prominent individuals who requested a contribution from him to found a society of friends of the arts. The painter explains that the gentlemen told him that the Academy of Fine Arts was not producing any satisfactory results. Biard was happy to associate his name with what he called a new renaissance in the arts in Brazil: “What Debret and Taunay began under King João VI, I could finish, and as I had to live in the city for a while, nothing prevented me from taking the opportunity offered to me with so much grace and kindness.”126 In accepting the invitation Biard expressed his wish to become part of a French artistic tradition in Brazil, initiated by the 1816 French artistic mission. By mentioning the names of the mission’s participants for the first time in his travelogue, he was also suggesting that his travel to Brazil was not a spontaneous decision but rather was predicated on a longstanding knowledge of the French presence in the country. Biard’s adaptation to the local official art system was apparent in another notice in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, published on May 28, 1858, about three weeks after his arrival in the Brazilian capital. It reports the painter’s participation in the founding meeting of the Sociedade dos Amigos das Bellas Artes (Society of Friends of Fine Arts), where he was nominated its honorary president. Among its participants were several local notables: Fernando Sebastião Dias da Motta (president), J. J. Teixeira (secretary), Ferreira Vianna (treasurer), François-René Moreaux, and Luiz Gonzaga Duque-Estrada. Individuals who were not present, including Moreira de Castro and José Cristino de Costa Cabral, accepted the title of founding members.127 The society was sponsored by the emperor and empress of Brazil, and among its activities was the creation of private subscriptions and lotteries that would allow the purchase of artworks and the payment of commissions to Brazilian artists. Despite the support of local personalities for the society, however, Biard notes in his humorous vein that the society’s initiative was never accomplished. Although he does not explain the reasons for the failure, the painter ridicules Rio de Janeiro’s elite by stating that according to some individuals who were very upset, if the enterprise had been a “matter of dancers, acrobats, or jugglers, it would have been completely successful.”128 Still, the painter does not want to compromise himself, so he quickly

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adds that he was not able to verify whether this opinion was well founded because he did not live in the city long enough to make up his mind. Biard’s involvement in the local artistic scene led Emperor Dom Pedro II to offer him a position in Brazil’s Academy of Fine Arts. On July 29, 1859, his hiring was officially authorized, and he was offered a two-year position as a professor of historical painting, replacing Joaquim Lopes de Barros Cabral Teive (1816–1863), a former student of French artist Jean-Baptiste Debret, who held a temporary position as professor of drawing.129 By the time Biard was approved for the position, however, he had already left Rio de Janeiro for the north of Brazil. The academy attempted to contact him with several letters sent through the governors of the provinces of Pará and Amazonas as well as with a letter from Consul Taunay. In his letter, written in French, Taunay explained that he was obliged to write to the painter to inform him that the Imperial government had decided to give him the chair of historical painting at the Academy of Fine Arts: “In the case that he receives this commission, he must speed his return to sign the requisite contract and start carrying out as soon as possible the duties we expect from his talent and zeal.”130 In Deux années au Brésil, Biard refers to Taunay’s letter as well as his answer to it. By acknowledging that Biard was in the environs of the Amazon, the emperor indicated that they were awaiting his decision about his appointment to the academy. In his reply, Biard declined the invitation by “asking His Majesty to accept my expressions of gratitude and recognition.”131 The reason Biard refused the emperor’s offer is not revealed, but it is likely that he preferred to keep his autonomy, especially because at that stage of his journey he had not yet achieved his main goal of painting the Brazilian Native populations. For a man almost sixty years of age who was already an official and successful painter, staying in Brazil for a lengthy period was probably not an attractive option. A letter Biard sent to a French friend indicates that even though he was appreciative of the recognition his work received in Brazil, he evidently hoped that returning to France would enable him to recapture the fame he had lost after the end of the July Monarchy.132 Even though the painter loved to travel, his adventures around the world were of limited duration and had very specific objectives. Indeed, his activities as a traveler and painter-­ ethnographer were meaningful only because his work had repercussions in

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the French artistic and social milieus and brought him numerous rewards in the form of royal commissions. Even though Biard never occupied any position in the Academy of Fine Arts, several scholars have incorrectly stated either that he taught in the academy or that he created an academy in Brazil. Guimbaud, for example, stated that during the Second Empire, Biard “made a last tour du monde and stayed a lengthy time in Brazil, where he became the minister of Fine Arts of the Emperor Dom Pedro.”133 The same inaccurate information was reproduced in Petit Larousse de la peinture and in the catalog of Les années romantiques.134 After six months in Rio de Janeiro, Biard accumulated sufficient resources to undertake his first trip: to the province of Espírito Santo, where he intended to paint Brazilian Natives from life. Yet for his expedition into the tropical forest to succeed, he needed support from a local resident, not only to be his host and guide but also to put him in contact with the other inhabitants. In Rio de Janeiro Biard was introduced to an Italian dealer of jacaranda wood who lived in Espírito Santo. To recompense the merchant for his future hospitality, Biard put him in contact with influential people in his Rio de Janeiro circles: “I did my best to pay in advance the hospitality that according to him he would be happy to offer to me. Therefore, I brought him to see people whose reputation would be useful to him.”135 On November 2, 1858, Biard traveled to Espírito Santo accompanied by the Italian merchant, who was identified only as “Mr. X.” The painter and his host traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Vitória, the capital of the province, then continued to the village of Santa Cruz on board the ship Mucuri, “a small steamer that heads up the river bearing the same name.”136 Biard brought several letters of recommendation with him from the Countess of Barral, “as in Brazil, where very often one does not find paid accommodation, hospitality becomes a necessity.”137 He also carried letters addressed to the president of the province, the chief of police, and other local notables.138 Biard returned to Rio de Janeiro in April 1859 after spending six months in Espírito Santo. He stayed in the capital until June 23, 1859, probably to secure more resources and letters of recommendation to continue his travel in the Amazonia. The painter was offered but declined a domestic servant; instead he left Rio de Janeiro with a Frenchman, who accompanied him part of the way on board the ship Paraná.139 The ship, which made the connection between Rio

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de Janeiro and Pará, stopped first at Salvador (Bahia), then continued to Recife (Pernambuco), where Biard’s French companion decided to take the steamer Tyne, which was then anchored in the harbor, and return to France. From Recife Biard continued traveling along the Brazilian coastline. On July 2, 1859, he arrived at the easternmost point of the Brazilian coastline, Cabo São Roque, whence he continued to Fortaleza, in what was then the province of Ceará. He described Fortaleza as “surrounded by coconut trees” and noted that “this city has a very pretty appearance while to enter it, it is necessary to go through a beach.”140 On July 6 the steamer Paraná anchored in the port of São Luís of Maranhão.141 Three days later the ship entered the Amazon River and anchored in Belém in the province of Pará.142 By August 1859 Biard had started on his journey from Pará to Manaus on the steamer Marajó.143 After passing Marajó Island, the steamer traversed the region of the lower Amazon to the town of Prainha, then navigated for a while on the Tapajós River, an Amazon tributary. On the way to Manaus, Biard passed through Santarém, Óbidos, Vila Bela, and Serpa. Many weeks later, when the painter arrived back in Vila Bela, he took a steamer directly to Belém and decided to continue by canoe to Santarém in Pará. However, by the time he arrived at the town of Óbidos in Pará, he was very ill and had to recover for several days before being able to board the steamer for Belém.144 Once he was in Belém, he chose not to take the Tyne directly to Europe. Instead he embarked on the Frederic Deming for New York and continued his journey to Niagara Falls in Canada, whence he eventually returned to Europe. Traveler, Artist, and Adventurer

Very early in his career, Biard received official support from several important figures in the French art system. This chapter argued that his artistic work as an official painter was closely associated with his production as a traveler-artist. He was able to balance these two dimensions of his activities in order to gain public recognition and popularity. His employment as an art teacher in the French Navy enabled him to travel to North Africa and the Middle East. These travels inspired him to produce paintings of exotic subjects, with a particular Orientalist orientation that later secured his continued participation in the Salon.

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Settling in Paris in 1835, Biard executed several historical paintings at the height of the July Monarchy, many of them portraying King Louis-Philippe. The new political context allowed him to obtain numerous royal commissions, and later he crowned his achievements by participating in the Arctic expedition, which not only consolidated his position as an official artist of the royal court but also made him a popular painter in France. Biard developed a small yet significant corpus of ethnographic and scientific works that resulted from his various travels. During the Arctic expedition, he observed and depicted the fauna, flora, and inhabitants of the Nordic regions. This ethnographic approach is apparent in his sketches and panoramas as well as in his ongoing collection of artifacts and mineral specimens. Like other European painters active in the first half of the nineteenth century, Biard successfully merged historical painting with painting depicting “exotic” peoples and landscapes, even though such efforts never received great attention from the French official art system, which by that time had privileged the genre of historical painting. Over the years he developed a more popular production that was aimed at illustrating French popular magazines like Musée des familles and Le Tour du monde, which published short accounts of his travels to distant parts of the world. The travel to Brazil in 1858 is part of this renewed interest. The painter was already old, and his glorious times of royal commissions were behind him. Yet travel to a distant foreign land offered Biard the possibility of once again acquiring popularity, this time through the publication of a travel account that like previous travelogues described Brazilian populations of color and exotic fauna and flora. Biard skillfully combined this traditional approach with an adventurous and humorous narrative, which found a receptive audience in the emerging illustrated press avid for travel accounts in remote parts of the world. His travel account Deux années au Brésil eventually placed him in a long and well-established tradition of French travel writing in Brazil and contributed to the development of tropical romanticism, which I explore in the next chapter.

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Tropical Romanticism •

in the first half of the nineteenth century, important changes transformed Brazil and its capital, Rio de Janeiro. After 1808, when the Portuguese court settled in Rio de Janeiro to escape the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, Brazil opened itself to the presence of European travelers and artists. Back in Europe, many of these travelers published books about their Brazilian journeys. In this chapter I explore the visual and written representations of Brazil in nineteenth-century illustrated travel accounts by some of these European travelers, scientists, and artists, including Maximilian Wied-Neuwied, Johann Baptist von Spix, Karl Friedrich Philip von Martius, Hercule Florence, Johann Moritz Rugendas, and Jean-Baptiste Debret, in addition to Biard himself. My central argument is that these travelogues, especially those written by French authors, contributed to a particular vision of nineteenth-century Brazil that I call tropical romanticism. This vision, conveyed through an extensive corpus of visual and written representations of the natural environment and of its populations of color, helped construct an ambiguous image of Brazil in Europe, particularly in France. I argue that in drawing from European romanticism, tropical romanticism constitutes a form of reaction against the scientific organization of nature and rationalism. Brazil, with its large mixed populations of color, offered a particularly rich context for the development of tropical romanticism, which serves as a framework to understand a society that greatly differed from European societies and that challenged European travelers to reconsider their own rationality as well as ideas of race and progress. 35

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More than a mere abstract vision, tropical romanticism conveys an image of Brazil as a seductive land with a luxurious natural environment whose inhabitants of various racial backgrounds live together but are unreliable and lack civilized manners. Transformed and incorporated in the national narrative over the years, this vision had some elements that reinforced the idea of Brazil as a country of racial mixture and racial harmony. However, although nineteenth-century illustrated European travel accounts contained the idea of racial mixture as an inherent quality of Brazil, they also clearly revealed that the encounters among Europeans, Natives, and Africans carried conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities. Like earlier travelogues, Deux années au Brésil relied on three forms of enunciation: description, narrative, and commentary. Yet Biard’s illustrated travel account contributed to tropical romanticism in original ways, such as by emphasizing the conflictual and opposed interactions between the white European traveler, represented in the text and the engravings by Biard’s multi­dimensional character and the Brazilian natural environment and populations of color. Whereas the painter is portrayed in various positive roles like naturalist, traveler, adventurer, and ethnographer, negative stereotypes characterize the representations of Natives and black individuals. As Homi Bhabha explains, these stereotypes, frequently marked by ambivalence, constitute a central element of colonial discourse, combining simplifications and false representations that deny the “play of difference.”1 Though far from conclusive, this preliminary discussion is aimed at contextualizing the analysis of the illustrations of Deux années au Brésil that is developed in the next three chapters to deepen the understanding of tropical romanticism. European Travelogues in Brazil

André Thevet’s The Singularities of France Antarctique (1557), Hans Staden’s History and Description of a Land Belonging to a Wild, Naked, Savage, and Man-Eating People (1557), and Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578) were the first European travelogues to offer visual representations of the Brazilian natural environment and Native populations.2 Although these early depictions of indigenous peoples provide much more information about European culture and religious beliefs than about the

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Americas, they do introduce important characteristics of the cultural stereotypes conveyed in later representations of Brazil. European travelers constructed stereotypes of the Natives based on their physical features and customs. For example, travelers noted the dark color of the Natives’ hair and skin because these characteristics differed from European physical features. The text and the images often reveal ambivalence, because the elements that are sometimes portrayed as positive might at other times be associated with undesirable qualities. For instance, nudity was associated not only with purity and innocence but also with poverty. Hunting and gathering could be related to living in harmony with nature, as in the biblical Garden of Eden, but was also perceived as laziness. Although most travelers portrayed Brazilian Natives, especially the Tupinambá, as strong warriors, they very quickly associated the use of bows and arrows and wooden clubs with savagery, and the Tupinambá ritual practice of cannibalism of their enemies was sometimes interpreted as a mere taste for human flesh. In the seventeenth century, during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco (1630–1654), the Dutch artists Frans Post (1612–1680) and Albert Eckhout (1610–1664) accompanied the governor of the Dutch possessions, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), to Brazil, where they produced a long new series of paintings and watercolors representing Brazilian populations of color. During Eckhout’s sojourn in Brazil from 1637 to 1644, the artist executed dozens of sketches that he used as the basis for still lifes of Brazilian fruits and vegetables; he also produced large-scale oil paintings of Brazilian landscapes as well as portraits of Brazilian Natives and enslaved Africans. Housed in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, these fullbody portraits are rare examples of enslaved Africans serving as the primary subjects of paintings. For the next two centuries, Europeans who traveled to Brazil represented the slave world through sketches, watercolors, lithographs, and woodcuts, but ethnographic portraits of Natives and scenes of slave life were not considered subjects worthy of representation in oil paintings. After the Portuguese succeeded in expelling the Dutch from Pernambuco in 1654, few European travelers and artists except for the Portuguese visited Brazil. Fearing the loss of its colony to another European power, Portugal restricted foreigners in the Brazilian territory.3 During this period the small

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number of military officers and religious missionaries who traveled to Brazil, including Charles-Marie de La Condamine, Yves d’Evreux, and Johannes Nieuhof, published travel accounts that did not contain illustrations.4 The few exceptions were those officers who worked for the Portuguese. For example, Carlos Julião (1740–1811), a mercenary in the Portuguese army who was born in Piedmont, Italy, traveled to Brazil in the second half of the eighteenth century. During his stay in the Portuguese colony he produced numerous watercolors of Brazilian slave life, which were gathered in a volume entitled Noticia summaria do gentilismo da Asia com dez riscos iluminados, which was not published for a larger audience until 1960.5 Brazil’s isolation did not change until 1808, when the Portuguese court was forced to move to Rio de Janeiro, which brought an influx of European visitors. The transfer of the Portuguese royal court to Brazil was the culmination of a gradual evolution throughout the eighteenth century. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Portugal made an alliance with England, which guaranteed its protection from French and Spanish invasions. Yet starting with the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), Portugal was again threatened with French and Spanish aggression. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Napoleonic Wars transformed the possibility of French incursion into reality. When Napoleon imposed a continental blockade to prevent European nations from trading with Great Britain, Portugal was divided between France and England. Whereas British naval supremacy could ensure Portugal’s continued possession of its overseas colonies, an alliance with France could prevent invasion but would certainly result in losing Brazil, which by that time provided Portugal with most of its supplies of raw materials.6 Portugal chose to ensure the possession of its colony in the Americas, and the Portuguese royal court escaped to Brazil on November 27, 1807, escorted by British naval vessels. Britain at this time was in the midst of profound changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Having abolished its slave trade several months earlier, Britain was backing independence movements in Latin America in the hope of opening new markets for its manufactured products.7 Supporting Portugal against Napoleonic France was part of these calculations. The Portuguese court arrived in Salvador (Bahia) on January 24, 1808. On January 28 the Portuguese prince regent signed a royal charter opening up Brazil’s ports to trade with all powers that “were in peace and harmony” with

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Portugal.8 On February 19, 1810, two important treaties were signed between Portugal and Britain. Article 9 of the Treaty of Navigation and Commerce gave Britain an advantageous tariff of 15 percent of the value on British goods entering Brazilian ports. Subsequently, under Article 10 of the Treaty of Alliance and Friendship, Portugal agreed to gradually phase out its slave trade by limiting it to the Portuguese territories in Africa.9 The treaties of 1810 ended the colonial pact that had given Portugal a monopoly over trade with Brazil and constituted the first step toward Brazilian independence. In 1815 another treaty between Portugal and Britain banned the slave trade north of the equator.10 Although the British emphasized humanitarian and religious reasons for ending the slave trade to Brazil, their underlying interest was to eliminate the Brazilian competitive advantage in sugarcane production. Exploiting a steady supply of African slaves enabled Brazil to sell its sugar at lower prices than the British West Indies could. Several months after disembarking in Salvador, the Portuguese court relocated from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the colony since 1763. There is no accurate estimate of the number of individuals who were part of the court’s entourage and who moved to Brazil, but various authors mention between ten thousand and eighteen thousand individuals.11 In fact, between 1799 and 1821 the population of Rio de Janeiro increased from forty-three thousand to seventy-nine thousand inhabitants.12 This great migration and sudden population growth generated great upheaval in a city suddenly forced to accommodate a considerable number of noble families.13 Portuguese state apparatus was reproduced in Brazil through the establishment of several institutions, including the Royal Treasury, the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals.14 Dom João Carlos de Bragança (1767–1826), the prince regent, also founded the Bank of Brazil, along with the Printing Office, the Royal Theater, the Botanic Gardens, and the Royal Museum. In 1815 Brazil acquired the status of kingdom, and Rio de Janeiro became the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve. With the death of Dona Maria I (1734–1816), the queen of Portugal, on March 20, 1816, the prince regent became the king of this new kingdom, although he was not officially crowned until almost two years later.15 The settlement of the Portuguese royal court in Rio de Janeiro initiated a new commercial and cultural opening of Brazil, transforming its capital into a “civilized, metropolitan court.”16 Merchants, travelers, scientists, naturalists,

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and artists interested in Brazil’s fauna, flora, and peoples were encouraged to travel to the country, where they were warmly received. An article published in the New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register in 1820 noted that “until the emigration of the Portuguese court, it was the narrow policy of the Brazilian government to impede, by every possible obstacle, the researches of travellers in these regions. A more liberal system is now adopted, which not only permits but encourages and assists the investigations of adventurous and scientific individuals.”17 As a result of the growing presence of British officers in Rio de Janeiro after 1808, several British travelers visited Brazil. Throughout the nineteenth century, many of them published travelogues on their sojourns in the Brazilian territory. Also as part of this opening, in 1817 an official Austrian scientific expedition accompanied Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria (1797–1826) to Brazil when she married Dom Pedro de Alcântara (1798–1834), the son of Prince Regent Dom João, the future Dom Pedro I, who in 1822 proclaimed Brazil’s independence and named himself its first emperor.18 The expedition, composed of fourteen naturalists, included the Austrian artist Thomas Ender (1793–1875) and the Bavarian naturalists Johann Baptist von Spix (1781–1826) and Karl Friedrich Philip von Martius (1794–1868). Ender produced hundreds of sketches and watercolors of Brazilian landscapes and urban life, whereas Spix and Martius traveled together from southeast Brazil to the Amazonia to produce a complete description of Brazilian flora, fauna, and populations. Later they published a three-volume travel account, with an additional atlas of fifty lithographs of Brazilian landscapes, populations, and cartography.19 The large plates contain scenes of several Native groups, including the Botocudo, Coroado, Puri, Murá, and Mundurucu. Other lithographs are detailed portraits of the heads of one or more individuals, emphasizing their body and facial paintings, headdresses, ornaments, and piercings. In addition, the lithographs portray a variety of artifacts, such as hammocks, baskets, pottery, musical instruments, hats, and a number of weapons, including bows and arrows. Finally, several plates represent detailed specimens of the Brazilian fauna and flora, and some plates also contain maps of Brazil. Yet Spix and Martius were not artists, and their natural history approach was essentially descriptive and intended to be scientific. As Lilia Schwarcz has demonstrated, Martius was one of the first scholars to propound the idea

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that Brazil was composed of three races, a thesis he defended in a short dissertation published in the Revista trimestral de história e geografia ou Jornal do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brazileiro in 1845 as part of an essay competition on “How We Should Write the History of Brazil.”20 According to Martius the three races were “the copper colored, or American; the white, or Caucasian; and finally the black, or Ethiopian. From the encounter, the mixture, of the mutual relations of these three races, the present population, whose history is very particular, was formed.”21 He believed that through this mixture, Natives and blacks would eventually be assimilated by the white Portuguese, even though he also recognized that the former two groups exerted an influence over the dominant (white) race, “unlike other states of the New World, in which those two inferior races are excluded from the general movement, as unworthy because of their birth or because their number, in relation to the number of whites, is underconsidered and unimportant.”22 Martius insisted on the superiority of the white Portuguese despite his defense of a balanced participation of the three races in the construction of the Brazilian nation. Yet he promoted rather than rejected the idea of racial mixture. Unlike other nineteenth-century travelers and artists who visited Brazil and described its Native populations as savage and primitive, Martius classified them as decadent and degenerated. According to him the role of scholars who were writing the history of Brazil was to understand “the causes that reduced them to this moral and civil disintegration, that make us see them only as ruins of peoples.”23 He called on scholars to recognize the particularities of the cultures, languages, customs, and social organization of Brazilian Natives and Africans and to discover how the Native peoples, who had been “in a stage of flourishing civilization, declined to the current state of degradation and dissolution.”24 Acknowledging the influence of Africans in Portugal even before the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil, Martius also suggested that historians examine in detail the history of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil. The presence of the Portuguese royal court in Rio de Janeiro contributed to the emergence of an official artistic production as well as the creation of art institutions. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, the prince regent was advised to commission a French artistic mission to accelerate Brazil’s cultural and artistic development according to a European model. It was certainly curious that after escaping the French invasion, the Luso-Brazilian

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monarchy turned to France to develop Brazil’s art institutions, but the reputation of French art and artists easily justified this choice.25 At the same time, the Portuguese colony was a very attractive option for French artists, whose official support at home vanished after the fall of Napoleon. Indeed, as Lilia Moritz Schwarcz notes, French artists conceived this artistic mission as a kind of exile.26 At the Portuguese court the members of the French mission could recover their recently lost artistic and social prestige. Alexander von Humboldt, who had traveled in Latin America between 1799 and 1805 and then resided in Paris later, may have convinced Joachim Lebreton, who had recently left his position as secretary in perpetuity of the Institute of France, to assemble the artistic mission to Brazil. Moreover, Humboldt influenced the selection of the French artists who would join the group. The Portuguese court fully financed the artistic mission, which consisted of eighteen participants. In addition to Lebreton, there was the historical painter Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (1755–1830), the sculptor Auguste-Marie Taunay (1768–1824), the architect Auguste-Henri Victor Grandjean de Montigny (1776–1850), the engraver Charles-Simon Pradier (1786–1848), and the painter Jean-Baptiste Debret. While still attached to the Institute of France, Lebreton, Debret, and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay received permission to sojourn in Brazil. The sculptor Marc Ferrez (1788–1850), the engraver Zéphyrin Ferrez (1797–1851), and the painter Félix-Émile Taunay (1795–1881) later joined the mission in 1817. The mission arrived in Rio de Janeiro on March 26, 1816, just a few days after the death of Dona Maria I, the queen of Portugal.27 In addition to promoting the development of an official art and architecture in the neoclassical style, the mission’s purpose was to create an academy of arts and a museum of arts. On August 12, 1816, the Royal School of Sciences, Arts, and Crafts was created, but it did not succeed. On October 12, 1820, the school was renamed the Imperial Academy of Drawing, Painting, and Civil Architecture. Eventually, it became simply the Academy of Fine Arts.28 During their stay in Brazil, the French artists pursued various artistic and architectural projects: Grandjean de Montigny designed the Academy of Fine Arts building, and he, Debret, and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay decorated Rio de Janeiro for the festivities surrounding the coronation of Dom João VI on February 6, 1818. The members of the mission ornamented public

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buildings and produced statues, busts, medals, historical paintings, and portraits of the members of the court. Like the French artistic mission, the Langsdorff expedition was part of the wave of foreign travelers, artists, scientists, and naturalists attracted to Brazil after the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro. Grigory Langsdorff (1774–1852) was born in Wöllstein, Germany, and trained in medicine at Göttingen. In 1797 he followed Prince Christian von Waldeck on a trip to Portugal, and during his stay there he started working for the Russians. As a botanist, he joined the Russian scientific expedition led by Ivan Fiodorovich Krusenstern and traveled around the world. In 1803 he traveled to Brazil with Krusenstern and spent a year in the province of Santa Catarina. In 1813 Langsdorff was nominated Russian consul to Brazil by Czar Alexander I. Langsdorff purchased a large rural property outside Rio de Janeiro called Fazenda Mandioca, which became a meeting place for foreign artists, travelers, naturalists, and scholars who were sojourning in the Brazilian capital, including naturalists and scientists such as Spix, Martius, Auguste Saint-Hilaire (1779–1853), Jean-Ferdinand Denis (1798–1890), and Dominique-François-Jean Arago (1876–1853). In Brazil, Langsdorff was charged with forming a scientific expedition to be sponsored by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg with the objective of providing Russia with a complete description of the Brazilian flora, fauna, and Native populations.29 To accomplish his goal, he recruited more than forty expedition members in Paris. The first of them arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1822, but that was the year Brazil was shaken by political unrest that provoked Dom Pedro I’s proclamation of independence. This upheaval delayed the expedition’s departure from Rio de Janeiro until 1825. Among the expedition members were the scientists Nester Rubstov (1799– 1874), Edouard Ménétriès (1802–1861), and Ludwig Riedel (1790–1861), as well as the artist Johann Moritz Rugendas. The expedition also included AdrienAimé Taunay (1803–1828), another son of the painter Nicolas-Antoine Taunay and the brother of Théodore Taunay, Biard’s future benefactor. From Rio de Janeiro, the expedition traveled to the province of São Paulo and then to the regions of the present-day states of Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondônia, Amazonas, and Pará. They followed various tributaries until they reached the Amazon River, where the expedition separated into two groups. The first group traced the routes of the Guaporé, Mamoré,

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and Madeira Rivers, while the second group followed the Arinos, Juruena, and Tapajós Rivers. At this stage of the journey, conflicts started flaring up between Langsdorff and various members of the expedition, and Rugendas abandoned the group. To replace him, Langsdorff hired the French artist Hercule Florence. Born in Nice, Florence was the son of a surgeon in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army who died when Hercule was very young. A maternal uncle, who received the Prix de Rome, probably influenced Florence’s artistic talents. In 1824, at age twenty, Florence was hired as a cabin boy on the French ship Marie-Thérèse, which was touring the world. When the ship stopped in Rio de Janeiro, he decided to stay in the city and secured a modest job with a French merchant. In 1825, probably through his connections with the French community in Rio de Janeiro, Florence replaced Rugendas in the Langsdorff expedition. Following in the footsteps of La Condamine, Spix, and Martius, Florence was among the few European travelers who visited the Amazonian rain forest in the nineteenth century. He produced numerous watercolors and drawings of the landscapes and Native populations of the region, including the Guaná, Guató, Chamakoko, Cabexi, Bororo, Apiacá, and Mudurucu peoples. In addition, Florence kept a detailed journal of the expedition, and for a long time this was the only known account of the Langsdorff expedition, which came to a tragic end.30 Several misfortunes befell it. When the group arrived in Mato Grosso, Riedel and (Adrien-Aimé) Taunay had a serious falling out with Langsdorff. Then in 1828, while attempting to swim across the Guaporé River, Taunay drowned. In the same year, when the expedition arrived in Belém in Pará province, several members of the group, including Rubstov and Langsdorff, contracted malaria. By the time they arrived in Santarém, the westernmost city of Pará, Langsdorff was manifesting symptoms of dementia as a consequence of his illness and was forced to leave the expedition and return to Germany. Only Riedel and Florence finished the Langsdorff expedition. Returning to Rio de Janeiro, Riedel became director of the botanic section of the Museu Nacional and the Botanic Gardens until his death in 1861. Florence married a Brazilian woman and settled in Campinas (São Paulo). He became a successful printer, inventor, and businessman in Brazil, and today he is considered one of the inventors of photography.31

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Despite its unfortunate ending, the Langsdorff expedition generated voluminous documentation, which was sent to Saint Petersburg in 1827. Among the documents are thirty-six maps, three hundred drawings, several hundred pages of handwritten notes, and dozens of actual animal and plant specimens. The expedition’s drawings, now housed in Brazil and Moscow, have appeared in numerous publications and exhibitions, especially in Brazil.32 The Legacy of the French Artistic Mission and the Langsdorff Expedition

After the transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro, numerous European travelers, scientists, and artists sojourned in Brazil. Yet the most popular and well-known nineteenth-century European illustrated travelogues are Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil by Debret and Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil by Rugendas. In these accounts, both artists extensively represented Brazil’s landscapes as well as its black and Native populations. Their representations became central references for travelers to Brazil in the next decades who published illustrated travel accounts. Even today their engravings of Brazilian slave life are still examined in scholarly studies and are often displayed in exhibitions and publications on slavery in the Americas. A brief survey of the main elements of their works will allow us to identify the patterns that appear in other European travelogues, including Biard’s Deux années au Brésil. Jean-Baptiste Debret was born in Paris in 1768 to a family of artists that included the painter François Boucher (1703–1770).33 Debret studied in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and took courses with his cousin, the painter JacquesLouis David. He also accompanied David on a trip to Italy to help him execute the painting Le serment des Horaces (The Oath of the Horatii).34 In 1785 Debret entered the Fine Arts Academy of Paris and won the second prize in the Prix de Rome with his painting Regulus partant pour Carthage (Regulus Leaving for Carthage). When the French Revolution started, Debret abandoned his study of painting to enter the civil engineering program at the National School of Ponts et Chaussées, where later he was appointed professor of drawing. Debret returned to artistic production by presenting his work in the Salon of

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1798, where he won a prize. In the following years he collaborated with the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine in the ornamentation of buildings and residences. During the First Empire (1804– 1814) he also received numerous official commissions and regularly participated in the Salon, where he exhibited historical paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte. As an official artist Debret was negatively affected by the end of Bonaparte’s regime in 1815. One year later, Debret accepted Lebreton’s invitation to join the French artistic mission to Brazil. On arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1816, Debret started teaching historical painting in the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts. He also painted several portraits of members of the Portuguese court. He was more than an artist, for he witnessed important historical events in Brazil. In 1818 he documented the coronation of Dom João Carlos de Bragança as King Dom João VI. He was in Brazil when the king’s heir, Dom Pedro de Alcântara, proclaimed Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822 and became Dom Pedro I, the first emperor of the newly independent country. In 1829 Debret was responsible for organizing the first art exhibition held in Brazil, which featured the works of the students of the academy. After spending fifteen years in Brazil, Debret returned to France in 1831. His return was associated with a series of disputes among French, English, and Portuguese partisans over control of the academy, as well as with the unrest that led Dom Pedro I to abdicate in that year, return to Portugal, and leave his son Dom Pedro II as the new ruler of Brazil. Back in Paris, from 1834 to 1839 Debret published a three-volume travelogue, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, with the publisher FirminDidot Frères.35 The travel account is richly illustrated with lithographs based on Debret’s watercolors.36 The first volume comprises thirty-six plates focusing on the Brazilian Natives; the second volume, consisting of forty-nine plates, focuses on the Portuguese presence in Brazil and also contains a section on the African presence; and the third volume examines the history of Brazil. In addition, the travelogue contains an extra set of plates depicting Brazilian forests and flora. As an official artist of the Portuguese court, Debret spent most of his time in Rio de Janeiro, but he did travel to other provinces, including Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. To some extent, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil sought to document the culture and history of Brazil from an

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ostensibly scientific point of view. In the prospectus accompanying the first volume, the publisher stated that Debret’s work complemented previous publications by European scientists and naturalists, including Prince Maximilian Wied-Neuwied, who extensively portrayed Brazilian indigenous populations.37 The first volume of Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil resembles an ethnographic collection describing Brazilian Native populations. Through the text and lithographs, Debret organized and classified the Brazilian inhabitants, along with the flora and fauna, material culture, and cities. This taxonomy of the Brazilian natural and cultural world also appears in the names given to the various indigenous groups, artifacts, plants, and fruits; Debret often employed words from the Tupi and Portuguese languages, which were foreign to his French audience. However, as he explained in his introduction, there were no “savage” Natives in the surroundings of Rio de Janeiro. He therefore used the artifacts in the Royal Museum of Natural History collections housed in the São Cristóvão Palace to depict Native garments and weapons. In addition, he wrote that he obtained information from Natives who were brought to the city.38 Among these Natives were members of the Botocudo (or Aimoré) people, who figure in the travelogue as the quintessential example of bestiality, ugliness, and savagery. The Botocudo were one of many groups that constituted the Macro-Jê linguistic branch; the Tupinambá groups, who lived on the coast, called them Aimoré or Aymboré. Historian Stuart Schwartz has pointed out that “no people offered more continual or effective opposition to the Portuguese than the Aimoré.”39 Nomadic hunter-gatherers, the Botocudo lived in the forests, but they were gradually pushed inward as the Portuguese colonizers expanded their sphere of influence. By Debret’s time they had been relegated to the interior regions of the present-day states of Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Espírito. Like the Tupinambá, the Botocudo were said to eat human flesh. These features and their resistance to the Portuguese colonizers earned them a negative reputation, and when the enslavement of Indians was prohibited in 1570, the law excluded the Botocudo from protection.40 Debret’s method of combining observation and ethnography is similar to the artistic medium of collage. He observed and drew individuals, landscapes, clothing, and artifacts from various different sources and later

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blended them.41 Despite the flaws in Debret’s fieldwork, his combination of ethnography, art, and natural history had scientific ambitions.42 Still, description was not the only discursive mode he employed in his travelogue. Sometimes the text served as a kind of testimony in which he justified the veracity of his account by emphasizing his position as eyewitness to the events he portrayed. Yet as Debret also admits, when he represented and described the customs of the Brazilian Natives he actually used testimonies of other travelers as well as visual representations from other European travelogues, in particular Wied-Neuwied’s Travels in Brazil and Spix and Martius’s travelogue.43 Usually his lithographs show the Natives wearing a variety of hairstyles and feather headdresses. In addition to describing the material culture of Brazilian Native groups, he focuses on their physical features and the geographic location of their villages as well as their lifestyles, traditions, and social organization. Debret’s representations of “civilized” Natives are generally idealized, even though in his text he frequently describes the Natives in contact with the Luso-Brazilian world as degenerate because of their alcohol consumption. The contradiction between an idealized visual representation and a negative written description, which was present in sixteenth-century European travel accounts of Brazil, persisted in the nineteenth-century work of Debret. Debret’s images were influenced by neoclassical and romantic aesthetics, and even though he observed various Brazilian groups, some of his renderings of Natives and black populations are idealized. In the individual portraits, the Indian models usually occupy the center of the composition, and their bodies are strong, muscled, well proportioned, and arranged in artificial poses.44 Because he rarely interacted with Brazilian Natives, his drawings combine portraits from life with sketches of clothing, ornaments, hairstyles, and artifacts drawn from various sources. Indeed, in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil he acknowledges that the various ornaments he was depicting were housed in the collections of the Royal Museum of Natural History. Unlike previous travelers, such as WiedNeuwied, Spix, and Martius, who provided a more balanced and accurate description of various groups of Natives, Debret did not have any prolonged contact with indigenous populations.45 As a result, some lithographs are

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imagined and staged representations, simulating the Natives in their natural environment. One lithograph, for example, allegedly represents various individuals of the Macro-Jê linguistic groups that were traditional enemies gathered together at a feast. The scene Debret constructs revives the traditional image of Brazilian Natives as naked and cannibalistic savages. He explains that he came into contact with these four distinct groups when Colonel João Ferreira brought them from the province of Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro in 1823 and they sojourned in a navy yard for eight days. Echoing his previous comments, Debret describes the physical appearance of these Natives as repulsive because of their custom of mutilating their ears and their lips. Scholars like Thekla Hartmann point out the inaccuracy of this image, which in fact represents only Botocudo individuals, identifiable by the wooden disks they wore in their lips and their ears; this practice was not found among the other groups represented.46 Most scholars have emphasized Debret’s idealized representations of Brazilian Natives and enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians.47 However, Mario Carelli and Rodrigo Naves focused on the recurrent contradictions between the text and the lithographs in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, demonstrating that whereas the visual representations are idealized, the text is usually derogatory.48 Although Debret’s renderings of Brazilian Natives are to some extent determined by his artistic affiliation with neoclassicism, the nature of the contact he had with Native populations also exerted a fundamental influence on his depictions. The distance between him and his indigenous models, since he had only brief and sporadic contact with them, did not allow him to revise the misconceptions he had inherited from earlier European travelogues. Gradually, as other Europeans had opportunities to develop long-term contacts with Brazilian Natives, such idealized visual images were slowly replaced by more realistic portrayals that were characteristic of the emerging ethnographic method. Throughout the nineteenth century these closer contacts also provoked conflicts, however, leading to more derogatory representations of the Natives. Beginning in the 1930s, Debret’s Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil attracted much interest from Brazilian and French historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists, particularly for its written descriptions and

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visual images of nineteenth-century Natives and enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians.49 Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre was one of the first scholars to make use of Debret’s lithographs portraying nineteenth-century Brazilian daily life; they were primary sources for Freyre’s pioneering (though controversial) book Casa-grande e senzala, published in English as The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization.50 Debret’s visual images of the daily interactions of white Portuguese and Brazilians with the black population, as well as his representations of indigenous men and women, played a crucial role in promoting a vision of Brazil as formed by the balanced contributions of these three groups of people. Throughout the twentieth century, this vision promulgated the idea that harmonious race relations predominated in Brazil, and it eventually fostered the ideology of racial democracy. Johann Moritz Rugendas, a member of the Langsdorff expedition, also helped to shape the image of Brazil in Europe. He was born in 1802 in Augsburg, Germany, to a family of artists. As a young man he studied at the Academy of Munich and became a disciple of Lorenzo Quaglio (1792–1869). In 1822 Rugendas arrived in Brazil to participate in the Langsdorff expedition. While staying with other members of the expedition at Langsdorff’s Fazenda Mandioca, he became familiar with the city of Rio de Janeiro and its surroundings by drawing numerous sketches of local landscapes and of indigenous and black individuals. Soon after the expedition left Rio de Janeiro, however, Rugendas came into conflict with Langsdorff. He abandoned the expedition and continued to travel on his own, sketching Brazilian inhabitants and landscapes. On his return to Augsburg in 1825, Rugendas published an illustrated travelogue of his three-year stay in Brazil. Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil was published in several issues between 1827 and 1835, in both French and German, by the publisher and lithographer Godefroy Engelmann, established in Paris. The travelogue contains one hundred lithographs based on Rugendas’s sketches. Divided into five sections—“Landscapes,” “Portraits and Customs,” “Habits and Customs of the Indians,” “Life of the Europeans,” and “Habits and Customs of the Blacks”—the text accompanying the plates is halting and disconnected from the lithographic visual representations. Indeed, most scholars agree that the text of Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil was authored not by Rugendas but rather by his friend and scholar

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Victor-Aimé Huber (1800–1869), who relied on Rugendas’s account.51 The text contains long, generic descriptions, moral and political reflections, encyclopedic information, and some statistical data. Unlike Debret’s travel account, which combines narration, description, and commentary on historical events, Rugendas’s text is repetitive and monotonic. Few passages about the three groups who populated Brazil (Indians, Portuguese, and Africans) seem to rely on actual experiences and direct observation; instead, most are based on other published works about Brazil. The lithographs in Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil, especially those portraying the Native populations, are much less staged than the lithographs in Debret’s travelogue. They convey a romantic image of Brazil, influenced by the mediation of the various lithographers, such as Victor Adam, who transferred Rugendas’s original sketches to the lithographic medium.52 Yet Rugendas’s renderings idealize the Natives as “good savages,” usually portraying them hunting and fishing in harmony with nature. In contrast, some passages emphasize the Natives’ perceived bestiality—for instance, “their life barely differs from the life of the savage animals with whom they share the domain of the primitive forests. . . . All their physical and moral faculties are employed to satisfy the desires and appetites of the animals.”53 Nonetheless, Botocudo individuals (who are depicted negatively in Debret’s travelogue) appear much like any of the other Natives in Rugendas’s lithographs, except for the wooden disks in their ears and their lips, a custom that is explained in detail in the text.54 It is difficult to systematically compare Rugendas’s original sketches with the lithographs published in his travelogue because his original watercolors were scattered. Yet his images of Brazilian Natives and the rain forest differ in several respects from those in French nineteenth-century illustrated travelogues. For instance, Rugendas’s depictions of Natives are less idealized than Debret’s portrayals. Indeed, some plates of Rugendas’ travelogue portray the Natives as totally immersed in the jungle. Even though they have almost identical physical and physiognomic traits, they are not merely decorative figures. They are always performing some activity and are clearly the main characters of the scenes. Rugendas, like the Bavarian naturalists Spix and Martius, also renders several scenes in which the Natives are interacting, negotiating, or in conflict with white travelers, soldiers, and missionaries in the forests, aldeias

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(indigenous villages), and plantations; this clearly emphasizes that these individuals were not in the least isolated, as the term savage would suggest. Although Rugendas does not claim to offer a scientific representation of Brazilian life as Debret did, his ethnographic portraits of Natives and AfroBrazilians are very detailed and were certainly inspired by the reigning scientific approach of his predecessors, including Wied-Neuwied, Spix, and Martius. Biard’s Travelogue

François-Auguste Biard published a preliminary and abbreviated version of his travelogue on his two years in Brazil. The six parts of “Voyage au Brésil” (Travel to Brazil) were published in Hachette’s magazine Le Tour du monde in 1861. The recently created magazine was founded in 1860 by Édouard Charton (1807–1890), a French journalist and literary figure who was also the editor-in-chief and the creator of the popular Magasin pittoresque. Le Tour du monde continued weekly publication until 1914. The magazine was aimed at a large audience of amateur explorers in a period in which illustrated magazines became increasingly popular. Expanded versions of the travel accounts that were preliminarily published in Le Tour du monde were later released in book form, usually with more and larger engravings. Both Le Tour du monde and Magasin pittoresque published accounts of renowned Frenchmen who traveled throughout the world, richly illustrated with woodcuts by well-known illustrators like Édouard Riou (1833–1900), a genre and landscape painter known for his hunting scenes. Riou’s preferred settings were Egypt and the Fontainebleau forest in France. Riou was reputed to be a meticulous illustrator and watercolorist, and he started exhibiting his work in the Salon of 1859. In addition to working for Le Tour du monde, he was employed by the French magazines Le Monde illustré and Chronique illustrée and by the British magazine Illustrated London News. He also illustrated several French novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, works by Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant, and Jules Verne’s works, especially Around the World in Eighty Days, published one decade after Biard’s travelogue in 1872. Deux années au Brésil covers Biard’s twenty-one-month expedition in Brazil. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into ten chapters and

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has several sections whose titles are names of places, various personalities, Native groups, animals, and plants. Subheadings reinforce the narrative dimension by marking specific events such as accidents, natural phenomena, and qualities of particular individuals. The book is illustrated with 180 woodcuts, drawn by Riou under Biard’s supervision and produced by several engravers.55 Like the illustrations in other nineteenth-century travelogues, these were created by several engravers and were reproduced in numerous copies. As a result, these woodcuts should be understood as collective creations, influenced first by the author, who conceived the sketches from life; then by the intervention of the illustrator, who transferred the sketches to be transformed into wood engravings; then by the work of the engravers, who reproduced the drawings; and finally by the publisher, who determined the number of illustrations as well as their sizes and locations within the text. The table of contents and the list of illustrations in Deux années au Brésil show that the book adheres to a travel-writing tradition in which three discursive modes predominate: description (or inventory), commentary, and narrative. Description, or inventory, is characterized by the enumeration of elements of the Brazilian visible reality, which Biard selects and hierarchizes. In most instances the inventory takes the form of lists of officials he met, cities and villages he visited, rivers he navigated, Native groups with whom he interacted, and the fauna and flora he observed. In addition, the painter describes the Brazilian exotic world, its rare and picturesque elements. Yet unlike the travelogues of his predecessors (like Rugendas and Debret) who were not experienced travelers, his descriptions are sometimes sparse; to compensate for the absence of details, he often draws analogies with lands he had visited in North Africa and the Middle East or had read about in travel accounts and novels. A clear example occurs in his description of Rio de Janeiro. Biard reminds the reader that it was the only city in the world not just to be surrounded by hills but also to have several hills within its confines. The painter emphasizes the various levels of light that cover the city and the “beautiful night in the tropics, where the starlight rivals the daytime, when the banana trees, palm trees, and magnolia flowers are added to the illusion,” which evoked for him the images of The Arabian Nights.56 Moreover, when describing the urban life

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in Rio de Janeiro, Biard states that the market is the best place to study the city because “it is there that we judge best the customs of a people.”57 The inventory of the market allows him to enumerate various exotic products while also introducing the city’s inhabitants, in particular the populations of color, including enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians as well as the freed and freeborn black population. The description continues when Biard reached the region of Espírito Santo. He describes the picturesque natural environment, repeatedly employing the expression for the first time: “As we moved forward the country acquired a more picturesque aspect, and this day I saw, for the first time, orchids hanging from the trees.”58 With his arrival in the virgin forest, he sheds light on the singular aspects of Brazil, as if he were the first man to observe and describe its tropical nature, by referring to its “wilderness where the ax has never swung. Human feet have not trod this land.”59 By writing like this, he not only emphasizes the exoticism of the new land but also increases the value of his account by describing things that allegedly nobody else had ever seen. Biard explains that a new life has been revealed to him and announces that his former tendency to capture the ridiculous side of what he had seen before in the urban areas “was replaced with serious thoughts, an almost religious reverence.”60 Yet while the painter evokes a romantic vision of nature as a sacred entity, he interjects narratives of wild bird hunts. In addition, he reminds readers how he developed his collection of tropical insects: “Whirlpools of beetles and moths visited me.”61 But echoing his experience in Rio de Janeiro, he also insists on narrating the hardships caused by “horrible cockroaches—with their soft shells, their large antennae—that covered the walls of my hut at dusk.”62 Through the next chapters, ants, mosquitoes, and chigoe fleas play the role of his antagonists. Despite the initial serious thoughts provoked by contact with the jungle, the painter’s satirical vein continued to predominate once he became familiar with the tropical forest environment. As will become obvious in the analysis of the woodcuts in Deux années au Brésil, this humorous approach constitutes one of the most original elements of Biard’s travelogue. In addition to reporting on Brazilian wildlife, Biard also portrays the Native populations in detail. Like earlier European travelers, such as Jean de Léry and André Thevet, he uses an analogy to describe the first Natives he

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met: “Like his companions he had inserted in an opening made on the lower lip a disk of cactus stem, a little bit larger than a five-franc piece. . . . I was very pleased with this meeting because I was not sure of being able to visit their country, even though it is not very far from where I was.”63 Biard seeks to provide readers with information about the singular aspects of the Brazilian natural environment and about the individuals and local groups whom he calls “picturesque.” Like the European travelers who preceded him, he considered most Natives part of the fauna. While in Nazaré (Pará), the painter visited the market in order to describe and sketch men and women of “all races,” which he was now apparently able to identify: “Here we see all race gradients, from white to black, through the most diverse shades: first the mameluca [mixed Amerindian and European ancestry], then the tapuia [Native Brazilians who are not Tupi speakers], the cafuzo [mixed black and Amerindian ancestry], the mulatto, the mestizo, the Indian, and the Negro.”64 Gradually, as Biard moved into the interior of the rain forest, he sought not only to collect samples of plants and animal specimens but also to inventory the Brazilian Native groups and other populations of color. The singularities of Brazilian urban daily life are featured in the engraving Une boutique au Para (A Shop in Pará) (see figure 2.1). The image is of a shop in which several disparate objects are on display: tropical animals like monkeys and parrots, a guitar, various kinds of shoes, vegetables, a French horn, and a top hat. In the right corner of the illustration, a black shoemaker is sitting on a bench and working. In the text that accompanies the image, Biard takes the opportunity to criticize the fact that various products were very expensive: “We ran all over town to find the most ordinary things: a little book, which in France would have cost me five cents, cost me six francs. We should expect to find here the strangest objects for sale in a shop: an umbrella or shoes in a tobacco merchant, in the shoemaker’s shop the elixir of the Grande Chartreuse, a guitar or parrots were sometimes for sale.”65 However, although the illustration and text reveal Biard’s collector’s taste for exotic animals and Brazilian curiosities, the composition of the woodcut is very similar to the lithograph Boutique de carne secca (Jerked Meat Shop), published in Debret’s Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil (see figure 2.2). The latter represents a shop selling jerked meat produced in Rio Grande do Sul; at the time, this constituted the staple of the enslaved population’s diet.

Figure 2.1.  Une boutique au Para (A Shop in Pará), woodcut signed by Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 319.

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Figure 2.2.  Boutique de carne secca (Jerked Meat Shop), lithograph, in Debret, Voyage

pittoresque et historique au Brésil, 2, plate 59.

The illustration shows a man, whom Debret describes as a Portuguese merchant, sleeping in the front doorway of his shop. Despite the depiction of the variety of goods sold in the shop, including dried fish and bacon, Debret’s composition is more organized than Biard’s rendering. In addition, in his text Debret does not focus on the curious objects on sale but rather emphasizes the unhealthy environment of these shops. Some scholars have stated that late nineteenth-century French travel accounts of Brazil were characterized by their economic and political analyses.66 Unlike Debret’s and Rugendas’s travelogues, Deux années au Brésil contains neither long dissertations about Brazilian history and culture nor references to other texts and documents. Even though Biard certainly read European and French travelogues in Brazil, he broke with the traditional pattern by privileging narration as a mode of enunciation, as in a travel journal. The lack of traditional forms of commentary in Deux années au Brésil .

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can also be explained by the emerging European modernity. By the midnineteenth century the growing development of steamship navigation and railroad systems made traveling around the world much easier than in the previous decades. European audiences were avid for publications reflecting the new speed of intercultural exchanges. These transformations were visible in the more dynamic formats of popular books and magazines, whose consumption in libraries or in the home was increasing as well. The emphasis on narration in Biard’s travelogue is also related to the circumstances of his travel in Brazil and the position he occupied in both Brazilian and French contexts. For instance, the lack of commentary indicates that Biard’s intention was not to provide an official history of Brazil. At the same time, the financial ties of dependency he established with the Brazilian royal court did not permit sustained criticism of the monarchy, especially regarding slavery. The painter justifies his cautionary position in one passage of the text, describing his arrival in the province of Pará. He explains how a “company” was organized to carry his party’s luggage, and he states incidentally that his reservations on talking about local politics could be observed when he referred to Rio de Janeiro. He notes that it was only by chance that he learned something about administrators, police details, and what emanated from the government in general. He adds that despite reading several books with information about the costs of each ministry and everything related to coffee, tobacco, and other industries, all these topics were beyond his reach. For this reason, he states, he let others talk on these kinds of things and himself refrained from either praise or blame.67 Indeed, instead of commenting about the local society, Biard preferred to narrate humorous episodes and tell anecdotes of everyday life. By making this choice, he reduced his responsibility to state the facts accurately; he became both the author of and a character in his travel account, as well as the object of his own humor in both the text and the engravings. Likewise, Biard’s superficial opinions about the Amerindian world express the assumption of European superiority by reinforcing derogatory stereotypes of the Natives, especially of his Murá guide Polycarpe, who becomes his main antagonist during his journey in Amazonia: “It is generally believed that these Indians migrated westward during the conquest of Peru, they are thieves, their word does not engage them, having taken on, even more than other Indians rubbed against our civilization, the vices of

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Europe, and passed over the good qualities . . . Polycarpe is a Murá!”68 This statement about the Murá of the Amazonia reveals Biard’s mistrust and fear of Amerindians even before he developed any close contacts with them. His comment shows once again his affinity for the dominant colonial ideology promoted by the white population. Sometimes the commentary in Deux années au Brésil relates to Biard’s role as the narrator of his own travel account, as he evaluates his reliability. In describing his route inland from the province of Pará, the painter acknowledges that he might be in error because the information others gave him was often disparate or even contradictory: “I was told that we were not yet sailing on the Amazon. It is likely that I will sometimes make unintentional geographic errors. I unsuccessfully used in Pará all means to get information: each one gave me his version, and rarely were they the same.”69 He also notes that he learned that the city of Belém was built on the Amazon River but that others then told him it was on the Guajarra or on the Guama River; eventually most people told him it was on the Tocantins River. Similar commentary on the vagueness of certain geographic information appears toward the end of the travelogue, in chapter 9, when he became ill and found himself at the home of João, the head of a local group of Mundurucu: “I could not say how much time I spent at João’s hut and how long it took to return. My weakness and my illness left a gap in my journal and doubts about my almanac. I neglected to ask João what he called the place where he lived, or the name of the river on whose banks I found the Arara tribe.” 70 In addition to the observations on geography and Amerindian groups, Biard’s use of humor can be considered a particular kind of commentary. He usually employs humor when he is introducing various characters in the course of the narrative, especially white individuals of Portuguese origin. For example, in chapter 5 he arrived in Belém and settled in a hotel. He observed that the “hotel entrance was a kitchen served by such dirty creatures and especially of such a strange pallor that I did not doubt for a moment that I had under my eyes sick people, attacked by yellow fever.”71 Later he explains that while walking the streets of Belém he discovered that those individuals were not ill at all; they were Portuguese from the Atlantic islands. According to the painter, for economy these people spent nothing: “I was told that several lived on a few bananas a day. Their blood is impoverished,

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they lose their strength; this regime, to which yet they become accustomed, gives them this color in which green dominates, which does not prevent them from rising penny by penny to become very rich.” 72 Therefore, when his guide saw one of these individuals, he always made this joke: “There is the future Mr. comendador [commander]; all these people become comendadores.” 73 This humorous comment, which will also appear in Biard’s travelogue’s woodcuts, allows Biard to ridicule nineteenth-century Brazilian monarchical society in which the distribution of noble and honorific titles (like comendador) among parvenu families was very common. But as if to protect himself in advance from any hostile reaction from future readers, he quickly turns the mockery against himself: “I intend to paint one, because this type of living corpse was a curious study to join those that I already had, but when I was able to do it, I found myself in my turn pale green and sick.” 74 By emphasizing the amusing and unusual aspects of Brazilian society, Biard leaves readers with the task of choosing their own interpretations of the facts and deciding whether his humor covers for his superficial understanding of local circumstances or is a covert instrument for criticizing Brazilian society. In Deux années au Brésil, descriptions of nature, local people, and the places Biard visits are embedded in the accounts of his experiences and movements throughout Brazilian territory. Consequently, the book’s narrative, defined as a “temporal succession of events,” occupies a privileged place in the travelogue.75 The painter reports his actions chronologically, including his departures, encounters, and new experiences. In addition, in certain passages he recalls previous travels. For example, when he paused to quench his thirst on the road to the village of Santa Cruz, it evoked a difficult episode when he was traveling in the desert in the company of an Englishman: “At lunch we ate shrimp and drank champagne. Around noon our thirst became an interference; we began to feel the value of a glass of water and went cheerfully to a beautiful lake very distinctly reflecting palm trees scattered here and there in the sand. What a disappointment, it was a mirage!” 76 By recalling throughout the text various episodes from his earlier journeys in distant lands, Biard underscores his extensive experience as a traveler in an attempt to bolster the credibility of the story he narrates. At one point in the tropical forest of Espírito Santo, for example, he was not able to draw sketches from life because of the heavy rains in November and December

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1858. As a result he turned to describing the picturesque natural environment while also narrating the hardships caused by insects and the inhospitable climate. He could not paint the trees of the river unless he entered the water up to his waist, since the river was overflowing at the time. Because he was used to walking barefoot, he gained various wounds caused by swarms of small flies that attacked the legs and produced a drop of blood with every prick, which hindered his walking for several months. Biard explains that “these pricks multiplied into wounds that were even more difficult to heal while continuing to walk barefoot. Other insects, in addition to other dipterans, authors of the evil, came every day to irritate, not to mention the plants armed with fangs and thorns.” 77 In this passage the admiration of the lush environment is consistently associated with a struggle for survival in a forest full of dangers. Exoticism not only created opportunities for blissful observation; it was also a crucible he had to surmount. The second chapter, focusing on Biard’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, contains the first episode of genuine adventure, especially the passages narrating the nights he spent in his hotel room: “I lighted, slowly this time, our candle, and dived under the bed: I crushed mercilessly one of the fugitives. But what was my horror! It was the largest specimen of cockroach (they are called baratas in Brazil). A cockroach! One of the most awful memories of my youth.” 78 Again, Biard takes the opportunity to narrate a story from a previous travel when for more than a year he lived on a warship that had brought cockroaches from Senegal. According to him, “they multiplied in such a way that the ship was infested with them in a few months. Many years have passed, but whenever these memories arise, a shiver runs through my whole body.”79 Yet the painter’s description of the destructive behavior of cockroaches was not original. James Wetherell, the British vice consul of Bahia who later became the vice consul of Paraíba, dedicated a section of his own travelogue to them: “These nasty and voracious insects at some seasons fly about during the evenings, they commit monstrous devastations and depredations, they plunder and corrode all kinds of victuals, and damage all kind of clothing, books, papers, leathers, cotton wool, &c., and in some way or another damage or destroy all they come near.” 80 The insertion of an anecdote from a previous journey inscribes Deux années au Brésil in a context broader than Brazil. A similar passage appears in chapter 4, when the painter was in Espírito Santo and his horse shied. He recalls his voyage in the Arctic, when he

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passed by a hut where dogs scared his horse, which reared and stepped backward, then hit a stump that made him fall off. Biard explains, “In less than a second I saw the movement, I realized the danger. Fortunately, I had been in Lapland! It seems a little strange to rejoice of having been in Lapland with regard to a rearing horse in the forests of Brazil, in order to give you time to see that it will crush you in its fall; yet nothing is truer.” 81 By recalling a previous experience that he had reported in a short account of his Arctic travels, the painter not only gives a broader dimension to this exploit, which was in fact very ordinary, but also heroizes himself as the protagonist of an adventure who was eventually able to control the situation and avoid a major accident. Biard’s early adventures among Brazilian indigenous populations occupy a prominent place in his travelogue. In one passage, he comments on the festival of São Benedito, a black saint: “At the noise of this uproar, elderly women solemnly danced an awful cancan that our virtuous policemen would have certainly disapproved of. After dancing, drinking, and yelling in one hut, the same Sabbath was repeated in another hut.” 82 His observations are similar to those made by other European travelers, including Jean de Léry, who three centuries earlier wrote about the dance performed by the Tupinambá. Moreover, Biard collapses the time between two temporal and cultural strata by evoking the sixteenth-century world of witchcraft along with the cancan, a folk and traditional dance of his own time. By connecting a festival honoring a black saint in an Amerindian village to a Parisian popular dance, the painter blurs the religious and social significance of the “witches’ sabbath” and the Catholic and black roots of São Benedito’s festival, which are not merely popular events, in order to give a familiar depiction of the festival to the French audience. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Biard regularly stresses his knowledge of Brazilian society by emphasizing his adaptation to it, even though the real aim of this flexibility is to convince the Natives to pose for him: “In one of the huts, I showed great courage by even drinking a calabash full of caoueba, a courtesy inspired by my desire to make myself popular in order to get some portraits later.” 83 By mentioning that he had tasted caoueba (cauim, a mildly alcoholic beverage of fermented manioc), Biard positions himself in a long European tradition of Brazilian travel accounts. Indeed,

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from the sixteenth century on, French travelers like Léry have described the preparation and effects of cauim. Léry even employed the verb caou-iner to denote the act of drinking cauim (or caouin, in French) during the ceremonies that preceded ritual cannibalism among the Tupinambá: “First, after all the villages surrounding the one where the prisoner will be brought have been notified of the date of the execution, men, women, and children being reached on all sides, there will be dancing, drinking, and cau-ining.” 84 French traveler Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, who visited Nova Almeida in 1818, also tasted the beverage, which he said had a “cloudy and whitish hue of milk butter and tasted similar to whey, but sourer.” 85 As Saint-Hilaire explains, the Indians originally prepared cauim from cashew nuts, maize, cassava, and other vegetables, which were cooked, chewed, and then left to ferment by burying them in a ceramic container for a few days. Cauim is derived from the Tupi word ka’wi (ordinary wine); by extension, in the Brazilian context this can simply refer to cachaça, a liquor obtained from sugarcane juice. Therefore, when Biard describes how the Natives prepared this alcoholic beverage, he is not a passive witness of events but rather a protagonist who experiences in depth what it is to live in an exotic world, even though his active participation in the Amerindian life is not disinterested. The numerous characters of the text and engravings of Deux années au Brésil accentuate the adventurous aspect of the narrative. In the first two chapters, during Biard’s sojourn in Rio de Janeiro, he meets several personalities, including the French journalist Altève Aumont, the consul Théodore Taunay, the butler of the Imperial Palace Paulo Barbosa, the emperor and empress of Brazil Dom Pedro II and Dona Teresa Cristina, and the Countess of Barral. These characters are rather decorative elements in the narrative, for they do not influence the course of events and do not have any particular significance.86 Probably for this reason, these members of Rio de Janeiro’s elite do not figure in the illustrations of Deux années au Brésil, except for the emperor and the empress, who do appear in two woodcuts based on oil portraits executed by Biard. However, several other characters are portrayed in the engravings, including Biard himself; the Italian host, Mr. X.; an Amerindian named Almeida and her father, Victuriano; little Manoel, a cook; a Native woman, a drinker of cachaça, and her husband, Mr. Benoît; his French domestic servant; his Murá Amerindian guide, Polycarpe; and Captain João, another Native man.

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The animals and the rain forest can also be considered as characters in certain passages of the account. All these characters occupy different positions in the narrative, as protagonists, antagonists, or adjuvants. In an unusual twist for nineteenth-century travelogues, Biard is not only the author and narrator of Deux années au Brésil but also a character who almost always plays the role of protagonist. Also, in narratological terms, Biard is a homodiegetic narrator—that is, he narrates his own story, as is commonly found in memoirs and diaries, while also playing the role of a multidimensional character. In doing so, the painter occupies a central place from which he has a view of the whole narrative.87 His multiple roles as author, narrator, and protagonist in Deux années au Brésil are comparable to those of Hans Staden in the text and the engravings of his History and Description of a Land Belonging to a Wild, Naked, Savage, and Man-Eating People (1557), the first travel account in Brazil in which the traveler is featured as a character in the woodcuts.88 Staden fought to escape captivity among the Tupinambá, whereas Biard also fought to survive in the Amazonian rain forest. Like Staden’s story, the narrative of Biard’s first expedition into the rain forest is marked by the opposition between the narratorcharacter and the wildlife and natural phenomena as well as human characters, particularly Amerindians. These oppositions constitute the most original features of Deux années au Brésil’s contribution to the development of tropical romanticism. Biard’s character becomes a hero only through the interaction with black and Native characters. Ridiculed and satirized, these antagonists shape the painter’s numerous facets as artist, adventurer, naturalist, and ethnographer. Though separated by more than three centuries, Biard’s and Staden’s travelogues resemble the adventure novels in which action predominates. With the increasing popularity of woodcut illustrations in the second half of the nineteenth century, the presence of the author as a character in the engravings became visible in other travelogues, including Henry Walter Bates’s The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863), Paul Marcoy’s Voyage de l’Océan Atlantique à l’Océan Pacifique, à travers l’Amérique du Sud (1869), and other travel accounts published in Le Tour du monde.89 Although Biard was primarily a painter, the role of artist is only one of the various roles he plays in the text and engravings of Deux années au Brésil. During his stay in Rio de Janeiro, his role of artist is the most prominent. He

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settled in his studio in the Imperial Palace and devoted his efforts to making portraits of the members of the court and to producing landscape studies. Before his departure for the rain forest of Espírito Santo, he bought a camera, consolidating the originality of his artistic approach: “On my way out, it came to mind to do something of which I had no knowledge: photography. I bought several mismatched instruments, damaged goods, in addition to a book that I would start studying.”90 Because photography was a technique rarely employed by painters of Biard’s generation, it confirms the painter’s will to capture all aspects of the new tropical landscape. During his stay in Espírito Santo and Amazonas, because of the lack of facilities and the unfavorable climate, Biard could not paint as he wished and was often limited to drawing and taking photographs. Regardless of these constraints, his artist’s eye, enchanted by the lush vegetation, never stopped working. In his account, he explains how his host did not understand his admiration when he went into “ecstasy at the sight of the strange shapes that creepers laden with flowers gave the trees they enveloped, to the point that they form all figures that the richest imagination could conceive of.”91 In the presence of tropical nature, with its giant trees and variety of leaves and flowers, the painter saw imaginary temples, circuses, and fantastic animals. In one river he explored during his stay in Espírito Santo, “each tree had fallen prey to lianas, which interweave on all sides, rising to the top, coming down in interleaved bunches, then rising only to come down again, by forming intricate networks everywhere, always green, always blooming.”92 Because of the harsh conditions of work in the rain forest, the text and several illustrations that focus on Biard’s excursions in the jungle show his merging roles of artist and adventurer. To execute his sketches and few paintings, he had to work in the water and wear outfits he designed to protect himself from tropical insects. The painter’s inability to work outdoors in the forests of Espírito Santo because of bad weather led him to live under harsh conditions and demonstrate constant ingenuity. As a result, he developed new skills that have no inherent connection with his artistic activities. He explored the forest not only to sketch the Natives and nature but also to hunt with a rifle. Therefore, the conflicts with Amerindians and hostile forces of nature contribute to the construction of Biard’s character as a romantic hero. Biard also presents himself as a passionate student of natural history. He started developing his taxidermy skills during his trip across the Atlantic on

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board the Tyne; he began his collection of natural history objects by asking a sailor to preserve a flying fish he had caught. According to the painter, this was his first preparation lesson: “The sailor put the fish in a barrel of brine, and a few hours later, he mounted it on a small board. Then, by using pins he opened its fins employed as wings, and spread out this curious unit, which, in contact with air hardens in a few minutes.”93 Once he was in Rio de Janeiro, he continued collecting animal specimens. Later, in Espírito Santo, his research activities, which included observations of plants and animals, intensified to the point that he described his hut in the forest as looking like a small natural history museum: “I prepared my birds, my mammals, my snakes. As for the insects, I forgot to bring the boxes I needed to place them in. Fortunately, cigar boxes were not uncommon, I cut small cactus boards, glued them to the bottom of the boxes, and my collections were set.”94 Also in Espírito Santo, Biard painted “a naturalist surrounded by the products of his explorations.”95 His keen interest in expanding his natural history collection nearly became an obsession. Toward the end of his expedition in the Amazonia, the painter found himself in Vila Bela, very tired and weak. Someone he talked to claimed to have caught a big serpent that was preserved in a nearby municipality, and the man told him, “Since you are collecting these kinds of things, you should turn that way and go to see a very large snake I killed a few months ago. It is with the parish priest, in the center of a small population on Lake Juruti.”96 Without hesitation, Biard changed course, took his canoe, and went looking for the remarkable snake. Just as Biard’s interest in natural history associated him with the role of naturalist, his curiosity about the different Brazilian “races” and about Amerindian material culture brought him close to the role of ethnographer. His concern for painting the Native populations and collecting the various objects and artifacts they fabricated remains constant throughout the period he spent in Brazil. He observed the festival of São Benedito in the forests of Espírito Santo and also met a Botocudo man whom he attentively observed, meticulously describing his physical traits and wooden lip disks. This ethnographic interest also appears when Biard describes how the Amerindians fished using bows and arrows and hunted monkeys using blowpipes. Several portraits in the final three chapters of his travelogue are detailed representations of Mundurucu tattoos and Arara body painting and

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ornaments. Other illustrations portray the rite of passage of a young Mundurucu man before his marriage and the ceremonial preparation of curare. Finally, near the end of the book, in order to complete his ethnographic collection and include in his travelogue one of the most popular and controversial topics regarding Brazilian Amerindians, two wood engravings portray two Natives who, according to him, formerly practiced cannibalism. Biard’s ethnographic approach in both the text and the engravings relies on colonialist methods. He is willing to do anything to convince the Natives to model for him. At the same time, unlike contemporaneous travelers who visited Brazil, he does not attempt to present himself as an objective scientist. Instead, he repeatedly reports how he organized several posing sessions in exchange for large supplies of cachaça, beads, and tobacco. The painter portrays himself as a European colonizer who is visiting Brazil for its own sake, never expressing any concern about the condition of the Brazilian Amerindian populations. By paying his models with alcohol, he constructed a relationship that contributed to a new image of Brazilian Natives as degenerate and corrupt. Mary Louise Pratt has suggested that “romanticism consists, among other things, of shifts in relations between Europe and other parts of the world— notably the Americas, which are, precisely, liberating themselves from Europe.”97 This statement is in accordance with the text and images of early nineteenth-century travelogues by French, British, and German travelers, scientists, and artists. First, the Europeans’ visual and written representations of Brazil were deeply marked by the important political, social, economic, cultural, and artistic transformations that were occurring in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. These changes, which scholars usually define as romanticism, simultaneously altered both relations among European societies themselves as well as relations with the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East, including the ways of representing the nature and inhabitants of these alien societies.98 Second, although these travelogues drew heavily from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century representations of Brazilian populations of color, for the first time artists and travelers made efforts to provide firsthand portrayals. The written and visual representations of Brazilian wildlife and populations of color that resulted from these observations contributed to

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the development of particular representations of Brazil. Since the fifteenth century Europeans had explored important areas of Africa, conquered the Americas, dominated the Native populations, and introduced an enslaved African workforce in the Americas. By the nineteenth century, they were totally integrated in the southern regions of the so-called New World. Therefore, the Southern tropical romanticism that emerged from these contact zones on the periphery, far away from the European center, would be deeply influenced by the Atlantic exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas.99 Romanticism in the Tropics

The huge Brazilian mixed populations offered a rich context for the development of tropical romanticism. In contrast with the romanticism developed in Europe, tropical romanticism provided European travelers with new elements not only to understand Brazilian society but also to question their own concepts of race and progress. Brazilian landscapes and populations fascinated Europeans, who were seeking exoticism. Unlike the distant territories of the Middle East, Asia, or the Arctic, Brazil figures in nineteenthcentury illustrated travelogues as a territory with specific exotic features, including not only the abundance of its rain forests and wildlife but also the allegedly harmonious coexistence of Natives, Africans, and their mixed, dark-skinned descendants. Yet although the idea of racial mixture could be perceived as unique to Brazil, these illustrated travel accounts clearly expose that the encounters among Europeans, Natives, and Africans in this Southern and eccentric contact zone were often marked by challenges that generated derogatory stereotypes. As a result, men and women of color were often portrayed as degenerate, unreliable, lazy, stupid, and wicked. The ten chapters of Deux années au Brésil show that even though Biard was warmly welcomed by the Brazilian royal court in Rio de Janeiro, his main goal was not to establish himself as an official painter. He used his good relations with the monarchy to develop a network of contacts and gather financial resources to undertake an expedition into the rain forest in order to accomplish his dream of painting the Brazilian wilderness and Amerindians.

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His contacts with the Brazilian Amerindians were, however, very ambivalent. His desire to meet the Natives arose not from a humanistic or scientific interest but rather from his desire to collect objects and execute portraits at any price. Despite his humorous criticism of Brazilian slave and monarchical society, Biard quickly adapted to the local slavocratic mentality. From the beginning of his sojourn in Rio de Janeiro, he hired black slaves as servants as well as Amerindians, paying them with alcohol and food. Although the painter contemplated the beauty and strangeness of the “semisavage” Natives he portrayed, he often accused the Amerindian servants who were in contact with white civilization of being lazy, thieving, and addicted to alcohol. Never­theless, his conflicts with Natives and his victories over hostile wildlife enabled him to forge an image of himself as a painter-adventurer in Deux années au Brésil. The presence of description, commentary, and narrative as modes of enunciation places Deux années au Brésil within the tradition of Brazilian travel accounts dating back to the sixteenth century. At the same time, the travelogue is innovative in its similarities with the increasingly popular adventure novel of the second half of the nineteenth century. Biard’s travel account adds original elements to tropical romanticism by privileging narration as a mode of enunciation, by interjecting numerous humorous anecdotes, and by visually depicting the author as the central character of his adventure. In dialogue with European romanticism, Biard’s vision of Brazil is based on a romantic opposition between the Brazilian rain forest as a place of origin and peace and simultaneously as a place of danger, where death constantly awaits the traveler. The construction of the narrative in Deux années au Brésil relies on Biard’s continuous fight against the hostile forces of nature and the opposition of various local populations of color. The struggle for survival in the rain forest presents Biard as a multidimensional character: artist, traveler, adventurer, naturalist, and ethnographer. Yet in order to accomplish his personal artistic goals, the painter ultimately made use of strategies similar to those employed by other European colonizers who had settled in Brazil and other tropical regions.

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Black Brazil as Satirical Commentary •

biard arrived in Brazil in 1858, ten years after the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. The African slave trade to Brazil had been outlawed since 1831, but it continued operating illegally until 1850. Despite the prohibition of the importation of enslaved Africans, the internal slave trade persisted and slavery therefore continued all over the country. Like other European and North American travelers who visited Brazil during the nineteenth century, Biard saw it as the black country of the Americas.1 Africans and their descendants were seen as the engine of a society that relied entirely on slave labor. In this context the European visitors perceived Brazilian exoticism primarily as African exoticism.2 Shortly after his arrival in Salvador (Bahia) and especially after arriving in Rio de Janeiro and moving to the royal palace, Biard was confronted with daily life in a slavocratic society. Not only was domestic labor performed by black workers, but the streets of these two former slave ports were full of enslaved, freed, and freeborn black female and male individuals carrying out all kinds of professional activities. Biard seems to have quickly adapted to the local slavocratic mentality; he was not an abolitionist painter. Yet I argue that his satirical written comments and caricatural visual representations constituted an effective critique that provides valuable insights for understanding Brazilian society in the mid-nineteenth century—including the provinces of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia, regions that are usually absent from works on slavery in Brazil. In this chapter I show that unlike other European travel accounts of the

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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which are long dissertations supported by data from other sources, Biard’s travelogue relies on a particular kind of commentary based on satirical observations that appear in both his text and his woodcuts. By exploring Biard’s visual and written representations of Brazilian slave life, I also argue that Deux années au Brésil’s humorous commentary reinforces and sometimes denies certain cultural stereotypes associated with black individuals. Moreover, I emphasize that in some instances satire is employed to ridicule other groups, including Natives, white Brazilians, and individuals of European (e.g., Portuguese, French, and Italian) origin. Satirizing Brazilian Slave Society

Deux années au Brésil sheds light on numerous aspects of Brazilian urban daily life by focusing on the enslaved, freed, and freeborn black populations. However, unlike other European official artists, Biard rarely explores the built landscape of Brazilian cities in his text and images. An exception is Santa Cruz Church, which he visited during his stay in the village of Santa Cruz in Espírito Santo. The front and side views of the church are illustrated in two engravings that highlight the curious aspects of the architecture of distant villages in the country’s interior, and these serve as metaphors for Brazilian society. The front view is portrayed in the woodcut L’église de Santa-Cruz vue de face (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Front View), which shows the façade of a small church with very simple architecture (see figure 3.1). Because the church is depicted close up and centered in the illustration, the viewer has only a partial image of the church and its location. The building’s façade is pierced by a Romanesque arched doorway, above which are three doubledomed windows. Two lateral columns support the entablature, whose cornice is decorated with vases and a cross. Although the text does not dwell on the architecture, Biard expresses surprise at finding what he ironically describes as such an imposing building in a small town like Santa Cruz: “As I had not been warned that I was going into an important place, and I thought Santa Cruz was simply an Indian village, it was not without surprise that at first glance I saw an imposing church.”3 From a long distance he had noticed the church building illuminated by the sunlight. Painted white, it had the ordinary form of Spanish, Portuguese, and

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Figure 3.1.  L’église de Santa-Cruz vue de face (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Front View), woodcut signed by Laly (brothers Pierre-Joseph-Marie and Charles Eugène), in Biard, Deux Années au Brésil, 135.

Brazilian bell towers and was decorated with carved vases. Moreover, even before arriving closer, the painter explains, he heard the church bells. The next engraving, L’église de Santa-Cruz vue de profil (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Lateral View), reveals the actual structure hidden behind the façade (see figure 3.2). In fact, the front wall is freestanding, supported by wooden beams; the church itself was no more than a cottage with mud-andwattle walls and a thatched roof adorned with a cross. The revealing image, which also constitutes a sort of commentary, is elucidated by Biard, who explains how he discovered the church’s hidden structure. The church building was effectively a façade wall intended to impress ordinary people. Through the upper windows there were two bell towers, and the ornaments and carved vases gave it a grand exterior, which according to the painter “announced the richness of art that could not fail to decorate its interior.”4 But then the painter realized that the wall, whose front was so well adorned, stood alone and was supported only by buttresses that defended it

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Figure 3.2.  L’église de Santa-Cruz vue

de profil (The Church of Santa-Cruz, Lateral View) woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Laly (brothers PierreJoseph-Marie and Charles Eugène), in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 137.

from the wind: “Those who passed the thickness of the wall by climbing the steps of this cathedral came back down behind it to get into the church, a sad shack, only a little bigger than the other huts.”5 Biard’s images and humorous comments about the church were based on actual observation. In 1860 Emperor Dom Pedro II visited Santa Cruz and made similar observations about the church. He mentioned that the residents lived in thatched cottages and that “the façade of the church is bigger than the church itself, deceiving those who see it from the front.”6 Indeed, the modest cottage was built in 1836 to house a church that was named after its patron, Nossa Senhora da Penha (Our Lady of Penha). Construction of the façade began in 1857, and the building’s proportions were considered excessively large compared to the village’s size and modest resources.7 Notwithstanding Biard’s surprise and the emperor’s remarks, the church building that the two men observed was not a Brazilian singularity. During the early colonial period it was not uncommon to find churches in New Spain that were composed of only a wall façade and a thatched hut. In the region of Yucatán (present-day Mexico), for example, Franciscan friars engaged in an accelerated conversion process by creating open chapels, and to each of these they added a palapa ramada, a pole-and-thatch structure, adjacent to the open end

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of the masonry chapel. These buildings reminded the Natives of their own shrines that reproduced the construction of Mayan residences.8 The existence of this kind of construction in Espírito Santo by the midnineteenth century suggests that the process of Catholic conversion of the Native populations was still in progress in the region. Yet Biard’s visual and written commentary about the two faces of Santa Cruz’s church is a metaphorical portrait of the contrasts and contradictions of Brazilian society. By the mid-nineteenth century Brazil was still relying extensively on slave labor provided by African-born and Afro-Brazilian men and women and benefiting from the work of the Native populations, whose social position was often close to servitude. The sumptuous façade of the Amerindian village’s little church embodies the great influence of the Catholic Church among Brazilian Native populations who, more than three centuries after the arrival of the Portuguese colonizers and despite living in poverty, continued to embrace Catholicism. The church building, actually a hut with a European-style façade, symbolizes Brazil as a mixed society in which the relatively few members of the white elite emulated a European lifestyle, even though with only modest resources. Since the colonial period European travelers had been attracted by Brazilian black exoticism, and various sources mention the nearly naked bodies of enslaved women. Still, unlike in the Spanish Americas, black subjects were rarely portrayed in either European or Brazilian academic painting. Furthermore, unclothed female black bodies were rarely depicted in the lithographs and woodcuts of illustrated European travel accounts in Brazil.9 Yet even though naked black women were usually absent from visual representations, Portuguese officials and European travelers frequently mentioned the presence of bare-breasted female slaves in the streets of cities like Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. Silvia Hunold Lara reproduces an April 11, 1796, letter from the Count of Resende describing Rio de Janeiro’s urban daily life in which he mentions enslaved women loitering in the streets or selling “insignificant things.”10 For the Count of Resende, even worse was the behavior of mulatto women. He claimed that these freedwomen, who lived close to the households of their former masters, became pernicious because of their bad behavior or gossip. Still worse, he said, was when they resided alone or with other mulatto women, because these women lived scandalous and libertine lives.

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The ways the bodies of black and mulatto women were represented in numerous nineteenth-century European travelogues reveal the growing belief in the necessity of regulating these bodies. Perceived as the source of sexual depravation, black and mixed-race women would ultimately be viewed as embodying the perils of miscegenation that gained numerous supporters among the white Brazilian elite and intellectuals toward the end of the nineteenth century. Before becoming a renowned painter, Édouard Manet (1832–1883) visited Brazil in 1848, the year slavery was abolished in the French colonies. He traveled aboard the Havre-et-Guadeloupe and spent several months in Rio de Janeiro.11 In a letter to his mother the young Frenchman described the city streets in detail. According to him there were only male and female Negroes (nègres and négresses) in the streets, because Brazilian men did not often go outside, and Brazilian women went out even less. The young Manet also claimed that all Negroes were slaves in Brazil; he did not distinguish enslaved black men and women from those who were born free or who were able to obtain their freedom. Reinforcing racial stereotypes, he insisted that all “these unfortunate men seem stupid” and emphasized the extraordinary power the whites exerted over them.12 However, in spite of these early remarks, Manet describes a slave market as a revolting spectacle for Europeans. He observes that the enslaved men wore pants and sometimes jackets of fabric but that as slaves they were not allowed to wear shoes. He adds that the majority of black women were naked to the waist and that some wore neck scarves falling to the chest. He opines that they were generally ugly but that he also saw some pretty ones: “They dress very gracefully. Some make turbans, others arrange their frizzy hair very skillfully, and almost all of them wear petticoats decorated with ugly flounces.”13 Although Manet’s observations about Brazilian slave life could be based on generalizations, his descriptions of their clothing are probably accurate. As Mary Karasch points out, most enslaved individuals “wore a plain loosefitting shirt with short or long sleeves,” but their outfits varied over time and according to the social positions of their masters.14 Yet based on European travelogues of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is difficult to determine from the illustrations and the text describing black individuals in urban settings whether the subjects represented are enslaved, freed, or

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freeborn. The travelers themselves probably did not always know how to distinguish these differences in status; this is evident from Manet’s statement about slaves being forbidden to wear shoes. Debret, for example, comments that on his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, he was surprised at the large number of shoemakers’ shops all over the city. Soon he learned that upper-class white Brazilian ladies (senhoras) wore silk shoes to walk on the city’s granite sidewalks. This custom meant that shoes rarely lasted for more than two excursions, which increased the frequency of purchase of new shoes and created the need for shops to repair the old pairs. Debret reports, however, that not only masters had the custom of wearing shoes. He explains that because six or seven enslaved women usually followed a rich Brazilian woman when she went to church or for a walk, they, like their mistress, wore shoes. He noticed that shoes were an important luxury product, that even women of modest wealth spent the same amount on shoes for their daughters as they did for their two domestic enslaved women.15 Black freed and freeborn women also placed great importance on owning a pair of shoes, as Debret also points out: “A well-appointed mulatto wants to put on a fresh pair of shoes every time she goes out, [and she does the same] for her children and her Negress. The wife of the poor craftsman almost deprives herself of necessities in order to wear new shoes to all parties; and finally the free Negress ruins her lover to meet this expense repeated too often.”16 In addition to Debret, other European travelers who sojourned in other Brazilian cities observed black men and women wearing shoes. Thomas Ewbank, for example, uses the expression “wearing shoes and a neckcloth” to refer to decent attire and notes that a well-dressed “free negro . . . can take his seat in places of public resort and conveyance as freely as persons of the lightest complexion.”17 In a similar comment, James Wetherell mentions black women’s gala dress, explaining that “the feet, bare, are inserted into small shoes, which just cover the tips of the toes; and the heels, very high and small, do not reach the heel of the foot.”18 Nevertheless, in another passage of his travelogue he refers to the “unshoed black population,” suggesting that the majority of blacks indeed did not wear shoes.19 Slaves were not formally prohibited from wearing shoes, but it was customary for most slaves to go barefoot. Yet enslaved men and women who were owned by rich individuals—especially those slaves who performed

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domestic service, including maids, cooks, nannies, pages, valets, butlers, and wet nurses—were well dressed and wore shoes.20 Nevertheless, in Brazil and in other Portuguese colonies in the South Atlantic, wearing shoes was an important symbol of social status that helped to distinguish freed and freeborn blacks from their enslaved counterparts. As historian Roquinaldo Ferreira observes, at the end of the eighteenth century in Angola, Portuguese officials complained about the many individuals who were wearing shoes “to become nominally whites.”21 Blacks’ lack of clothing disturbed European travelers, many of whom were ambivalent about seeing the nearly naked bodies of enslaved women in Brazil: sometimes they expressed admiration, at other times revulsion. Manet, for example, initially found the exoticism of women of African descent a “hideous” spectacle, but at the same time he was able to identify some beautiful “Negresses.” The appeal of black women was not only because of their stylishness and their naked breasts but also because they were the only women to walk in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, even in the midnineteenth century, white Brazilian women continued to remain largely secluded in cities like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador. As Lara states, when “they would go out to the street, [they] would often wear great cloaks of black baize or silk.”22 The presence of blacks on the streets of cities such as Salvador and Rio de Janeiro was also a cause of disappointment for travelers like Biard who went to Brazil in search of Amerindian exoticism. On arriving in the country, the painter clearly expressed a lack of interest in blacks and a desire to go to the rain forest to paint indigenous groups: “I wanted to have some by any means; I had already seen Negroes in Africa.”23 In Salvador, he noticed the massive presence of black people in the streets: “the Negroes, always the Negroes, shouting, pushing; their costumes were not unexpected: dirty trousers, dirty shirts, grubby feet, often enormous, the sad result of this dreadful disease named elephantiasis, caused almost always by depravity.”24 But even while expressing a certain distaste, Biard also observed the beauty of the African and Afro-Brazilian women who lived in Salvador’s lower city: “I have heard that if you want to see beautiful Negresses you must go to Bahia. Indeed, I saw several who were not bad-looking, but all of them were swarming in the narrow streets of the low town, where French, English, Portuguese, Jewish, and Catholic merchants lived in an insalubrious

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atmosphere.”25  Nevertheless, Biard’s ambiguous comment about black women’s beauty is accompanied by a warning about the city’s ambiance of depravity. Like other European travelers, he almost always associated slaves with degeneracy, explicit sexuality, and consequent disease. In fact, elephantiasis (filariasis) is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, not sexual contact. By the mid-1850s, physicians had already correlated the illness with the poor living conditions of enslaved individuals who walked barefoot and were almost naked.26 Biard’s association did not emerge solely from his own prejudice, however. In the domestic environment, enslaved women who worked in various regions of Brazil were expected to provide sexual favors to the male members of the household. Although in some cases enslaved women became the lovers of their masters, in many other instances they were simply sexually abused by the masters and other males in the household.27 Despite Biard’s interest in meeting as many Natives as possible, during his stay in the Amazonia he also extensively commented on the daily lives of blacks in both the cities and the small villages of the region. Previous European travelers had cited the presence of blacks in the Amazonia. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), the British naturalist who along with Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution and who visited Pará in 1848, mentioned “canoes passing with their motley crews of Negroes and Indians.”28 Biard similarly makes repeated references to freeborn, freed, and enslaved blacks, confirming their visible presence in the northern areas of Brazil during the second half of the nineteenth century. During his journey in Brazil he interacted with various individuals whom he identified as black or mixed race by using a range of terms such as Negro, mulatto, mulatta, and cafuzo. These men and women, many of them the domestic servants of Biard’s hosts, helped him in his negotiations with the Natives. In Belém Biard commented on the beauty of black women in the streets, emphasizing how carefully they dressed and praising their sophisticated hairstyles. According to him, black women and especially mulatto women “make with their curly wool scaffolds of large sizes, which could escape the assistance of a comb: but they all have one, immense tortoiseshell comb. Flowers play a big role in this too, and sometimes these women are quite pleasant to look at, with their low-cut dresses, always of a brilliant color.”29 In addition, the painter suggested that blacks and Natives were all over the

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city of Belém. On arriving at the hotel, he noticed that the hotel owner lived in a room with “his children, the pale domestic servants, and Negroes.30 After booking a room, the painter and his travel companions returned to the quay to collect their luggage. One of them arranged to have the baggage transported by seventeen individuals of “all colors, ages, and sexes.”31 With his usual irony the painter describes how the work of these individuals was organized. He explains that the weakest commission agents transported the biggest objects, implying that the weakest and the poorest individuals performed the hardest work. Biard also emphasizes that the kitchen and the stairs were full and that the line of porters extended into the street: “Our sergeant made all these folks enter our big bedroom; lined up in order of size, each porter had its package. As this maneuver was taken seriously, the group kept themselves serious. Each one received, according to his work, a coin.”32 This scene is illustrated in the engraving La paye des commissionaires, au Pará (The Pay of the Commission Agents, in Pará), which shows several humbly dressed black individuals waiting in a line with various kinds of luggage (see figure 3.3). Some of them are leaving the room, whereas others are awaiting payment from a white individual who is wearing a redingote and a hat. On the right side of the image, a porter is counting his money. On the left, Biard (the taller individual with a moustache) and another man smoking a cigar watch the scene with interest. During his sojourn in the Amazonia, Biard represented enslaved, freed, and freeborn blacks in a more positive light than he had in Rio de Janeiro, since according to him these individuals were more helpful and reliable than his Amerindian guides. After arriving in Manaus, the painter went into the forest with Polycarpe, his Murá guide. After walking a long distance, Biard and Polycarpe stopped at a house in the middle of a clearing with a manioc plantation. He saw a big strong black man standing at the door with his arms crossed and holding a musket. “I went directly to him,” he explains, “followed by Polycarpe, whom I had far outdistanced and who was at least a hundred paces behind me, because he must have spent time getting up. . . . I knew the importance of a white man in the presence of a Negro, and I went to sit in the hut, passing near him and making just a little friendly nod.”33 The painter emphasizes how social and racial hierarchy operated in nineteenth-century Brazil by explaining that as a white man, he could

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Figure 3.3.  La paye des com-

missionaires, au Pará (The Pay of the Commission Agents, in Pará), woodcut signed by Jean-FrançoisAuguste Trichon and Édouard Riou, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 314.

allow himself to enter a private property without permission even though an armed black man guarded the site. To support his statement he adds that he was warmly welcomed by the black guard, who not only brought him fresh water in a calabash but also offered him a glass of cachaça. The man informed Biard that his name was Chrysostome. He was the soldier in charge of overseeing the new plantation, which belonged to a colonel who was the commander of weaponry at Manaus.34 In Pará Biard continued to observe blacks in urban and rural settings performing various kinds of tasks, including domestic service and agricultural activities like cultivating manioc, coffee, cacao, fruit trees, and rice.35 After visiting the market and wharf of Vigia de Nazaré (which he refers to simply as Nazaré), the painter commented that “to unload the luggage on the quay, a company of blacks is organized; they proceed in orderly fashion and are subordinate to chiefs.”36 Later, when the painter went to the island of Arapiranga, near Marajó, he visited a large fazenda (plantation) owned by a Portuguese individual. There, “about fifty slaves were busy making all kinds of vases; they showed us some which were gorgeous.”37 He decided to settle on the fazenda for some days in order to paint the landscape and the Natives living in the surrounding areas. The enslaved men who worked on the fazenda assisted Biard in searching for exotic animals during his excursions into the forest. “We entered the thickness of the woods,” he describes. “I had already expressed regret over not encountering snakes. My Negroes had seen them from different sides, including a huge boa they pledged to hunt down and bring me alive.”38 The

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black men then told Biard various stories about snakes that ate animals of fabulous size, and because it made him happy, they offered to catch one the next day. After slipping for some time through the vines, Biard was trying to get past a tree struck down by lightning when he saw on the other side, lying on the ground, “in rigid immobility a very large snake of an iron color. I often regretted being forced to use my rifle on such occasions. I turned quickly to tell the Negroes to help me capture the living animal, but they had become invisible: their bravery had failed in the presence of reality.”39 In this passage Biard emphasizes his courage in contrast to the cowardice of the local blacks, who despite knowing the tropical fauna were not willing to face the serpent. Perhaps the painter was unaware of a likely reason for this response. In the cosmologies of West Africa and West Central Africa, where these men or their ancestors came from, serpents were sacred animals. For example, among the Lunda people in West Central Africa (present-day Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo), Chinawezi was a cosmic serpent that was the origin of all things.40 In the old Kingdom of Dahomey (contemporary Republic of Benin), the serpent Dan was a sacred animal associated with numerous divinities.41 Through lack of knowledge and to promote himself as a courageous man, the painter interpreted the response of the enslaved black men as simple fear or superstition. Biard does not identify the origin of the enslaved and freed blacks he met during his stay in the Amazonia, but some passages suggest that some individuals were born in Africa. As the painter was preparing to leave Pará for the rain forest, he was abandoned by Benoît, his French servant. Therefore, he started to look for another individual to accompany him. One of his French friends asked the “company of blacks” who had helped them transport their luggage from the quay if they could find him a “fellow,” since according to Biard the term domestic servant ought not to be used. The painter recounts that the black man who was the chief of the group came to see him: “If there is a big difference between the ugliness of an old Negro and a pretty Parisian, there was an even bigger difference between this man and an old Negro. His was the most horrible head I have ever seen.”42 In addition the painter notices that the black man had an ornament, “as is the practice in some African tribes, a ridge from the forehead down to the nose. This ridge, or rather these notches, are inspired by the tail of the

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crocodile.”43 When the man opened his mouth to answer the request, the painter was surprised: “I thought I saw the mouth of a tiger: the teeth, which were cut very sharp, added to the horrible expression of his face; I promised myself to paint it on my return.”44 Even though Biard did not include a portrait of this man in his travelogue, the text suggests he may have been born in Africa. Whereas facial marks and dental modification were not uncommon among slaves brought to Brazil from west central Africa and Mozambique, Karasch explains in reference to Rio de Janeiro that “there is no evidence that descendants of Africans continued the tradition of ethnic cicatrization [scarification].”45 Early nineteenth-century travelers like Rugendas and Debret documented the practice of facial marks, but they do not describe dental modification.46 Wetherell, however, mentions that black men of the coastal areas of Brazil had “their teeth each filed away to a point which gives a peculiar savage appearance to the mouth when opened,” reminding him of shark teeth.47 Moreover, “newspaper advertisements record the variety of styles of filed or cut teeth and cicatrizations that were associated with particular ethnic groups.”48 In the late nineteenth century, European colonizers reported the practice of sophisticated facial marking and tooth modification among various West Central African populations of the Upper Congo River region and among peoples from eastern Africa, including the region of modern Mozambique, both of which provided Brazil with captives during the Atlantic slave trade. Yet dental modification was a widespread practice among men and women from various regions of Africa.49 Recent archaeological excavation has revealed filed teeth among the skeletal remains of Africans unearthed in New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia.50 Moreover, in Brazil, tooth modification was appropriated by local populations and adopted by some Native groups that did not have this custom before the arrival of Africans.51 Two small woodcuts from Biard’s first excursions in Rio de Janeiro are marked by humorous commentary as a mode of enunciation. The engraving Vêtu de blanc (Dressed in White) shows Biard dressed in white and wearing a white hat (see figure 3.4). Burdened and carrying a backpack, he is holding a walking stick, and he seems to be walking with some difficulty. In the background, to the left, three black men observe him. As in other engravings representing black individuals, the three characters in the background are

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Figure 3.4.  Vêtu de blanc (Dressed in

White), woodcut signed by FélixJean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 68.

barefoot and wearing similar striped trousers and white shirts. The characters, who have mocking expressions, are represented in caricatures that emphasize the size of their lips and their noses. The illustration relates to a humorous passage in which Biard laments having brought only white clothes with him from Paris, whereas everybody in Brazil followed the European fashion of wearing black: “Already at seven o’clock in the morning, store clerks, with their brooms, were wearing elegant costumes of cloth. With regard to white, I did not see a trace in a country where only criminals should be sentenced to the torture of wearing black outfits.”52 The engraving also recalls another passage in which he explains that he carried his own backpack during an excursion to the Tijuca Cascade: “My day ended, I took my bag and my umbrella. The climb seemed very long. Occasionally slaves I met opened their eyes, gawking at me. It was momentous what they saw for the first time! A free man, a doctor perhaps (as in Brazil every profession has its doctor), a white bending under his burden!”53 While Biard ridicules himself and the stereotypical black characters in the illustration, he also satirizes the hierarchical slave society of nineteenth-­ century Brazil. In this context, not only were all elite white males constantly referred to as doctors, but the enslaved population and the lower classes fully adhered to this form of address.

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Figure 3.5.  Vêtu de noir (Dressed in

Black), woodcut signed by Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 79.

A few pages later, another engraving, titled Vêtu de noir (Dressed in Black), shows Biard from the back, dressed in a black redingote (see figure 3.5). He holds a cane in his left hand and wipes the sweat from his face with his right hand. In the background to the left, four black men are bowing to the painter with great respect. In the upper right corner, the sun is portrayed with a smile, as if in a comic book. The illustration and accompanying text reveal that when Biard started dressing in black as other elite white males did, he eventually gained the respect of Brazilian society, which venerated all aspects of European fashion even though it was not adapted to the local climate. In several engravings accompanied by satirical comments, Biard portrayed black men and women in Rio de Janeiro. In these renderings he represents in detail the outfits of black female street vendors. Although in the images the black women do not wear shoes, they do wear elaborate head scarves, large earrings, long skirts, and panos da costa (cloth from the Coast) over their shoulders, as was observed by previous travelers.54 Yet unlike other European travelers such as Ewbank—who identified enslaved men and women he observed in the streets of Rio de Janeiro by their place of origin in

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Africa, using terms such as Mina and Mozambique—Biard does not seem to be able to identify particular African groups.55 The engraving Négresses à Rio de Janeiro (Black Women in Rio de Janeiro), for example, features the dresses and various styles of black women’s clothing (see figure 3.6). At the same time it takes a notably humorous approach, focusing on black women’s habit of carrying all kinds of objects on their heads. Biard explains that he saw three black women who were talking and gesticulating: on the head of the first one was a closed umbrella, on the head of the second one an orange, and on the head of the third a small bottle. Other European travelers like Wetherell noted that umbrellas were a very popular “luxurious article” in Rio de Janeiro, even among the black population who had “the shadow’d livery of the burnished sun.”56 To his first observation Biard adds that “it is probably because of their habit of carrying everything on their head that Negresses have shapely bodies, through placing the torso forward and walking with a dignity that many women of the richest white classes would envy.”57 For the first time, the painter does not convey a negative image of black individuals; instead he emphasizes the dignity of the black women depicted, stating that they were even more elegant than elite white women. Even though the text and the engraving of black women carrying objects on their heads seem to be a caricature to amuse the reader, they were certainly

Figure 3.6.  Négresses à Rio de Janeiro (Black Women in Rio de Janeiro), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and François-Auguste Biard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 93.

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Figure 3.7.  Concours des écoliers, la veille du jour de Saint Alexis (Schoolchildren’s Competition, before the Day of Saint Alexis), lithograph, in Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, 3, plate 7.

based on careful observation. Indeed, in a lithograph titled Concours des écoliers, la veille du jour de Saint Alexis (Schoolchildren’s Competition, before the Day of Saint Alexis), Debret portrayed an enslaved woman who was following her master’s daughter in a schoolchildren’s contest, carrying an umbrella on her head (see figure 3.7). In West Africa, the use of umbrellas (very often of huge sizes) was restricted to kings, whereas in nineteenth-century Brazil umbrellas were popular items accessible to people of various social positions. In addition, Brazilian photographer Marc Ferrez took at least one photograph in the 1880s of a black woman wearing a head scarf, a long white skirt, and a pano da costa over one shoulder and carrying a black umbrella carefully placed on her head, confirming that Debret’s and Biard’s illustrations were not the product of imagination.58 Biard also reportedly observed some popular religious festivals in which most of the participants were black individuals. He mentions that shortly after his arrival in Brazil, he saw a procession in honor of Saint George, an event that Debret also described in his text and portrayed in the lithograph Statue de S. George et son cortège, precedent la procession de la Fête-Dieu (Statue of Saint George and His Procession, Preceding the Corpus Christi Procession).59 Saint George is the patron saint of Rio Janeiro, and even today many Afro-Brazilians are his devotees. His feast day, April 23, is widely

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celebrated with masses and processions, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where the date is a municipal holiday. Given that Biard arrived in Brazil in May 1858, it is quite likely that he attended the same procession that Debret depicted, which was held before the Corpus Christi festival in June. No illustration portrays the procession, but in his usual style the painter’s narration emphasizes the anecdotal elements: “All the dignitaries were there and were escorting an effigy on horseback, ironclad from head to toe, such that from afar I took it for a real person; by chance, and to eliminate any doubt, the people who were in charge of monitoring the saint forgot him for a moment, and when the horse shied, the saint was almost thrown.”60 Likewise, Biard mentions attending a procession for another feast day several days later but does not name the saint. If the procession was in fact held several days, or even weeks, after Saint George’s festival, it could have been for one of the numerous June festivals, such as those celebrating Saint Anthony, Saint Peter, and Saint John the Baptist. He explains that the procession included charming girls from eight to twelve years old, who according to him were dressed in Louis XV fashion with coats of silk, velvet, and huge crinolines: “They danced by moving forward coquettishly, seeming already to know that they were the most beautiful ornaments of the festival. By contrast, several of them were accompanied by individuals, probably their fathers, who were walking almost as proudly, wearing smocks of all colors, their umbrellas in hand, a cigar in their mouth.”61 Biard also observes the officers of the army, with their bearskin military hats, or shakos, under their arms and who were wearing the badges of male and female saints. In addition, a drum major, “all in red from head to toe, preceded the soldiers wearing their tiger overalls. At the rear, the Negroes shot firecrackers at the legs of the curious.”62 It is interesting that the text does not denote the parade participants themselves as black men and black girls, but this information is revealed in two small illustrations accompanying the text, including the engraving Nègre gandin à Rio de Janeiro (Negro Dandy in Rio de Janeiro) (see figure 3.8). This portrait, depicting a black man who, Biard speculates, was probably the father of a girl marching in the procession, conveys the stereotype of the gandin (dandy). This term, very popular in Paris by 1855, referred to the habitués of De Gand Boulevard (today Italians’ Boulevard). In titling this engraving,

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Figure 3.8.  Nègre gandin à Rio de Janeiro (Black Dandy in Rio de Janeiro), woodcut signed by François-Auguste Biard and Édouard Riou, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 88.

Biard used the word gandin in its traditional sense of an elegant young (black) dandy, which became popular in London in the 1770s. At the same time, by employing this adjective in reference to black men in Brazil, the painter establishes an unexpected association between modern European capitals like London and Paris and the slave society of Rio de Janeiro.63 Although the stereotype of the vain black man contrasts with the image of the black worker, which appears in other engravings of Deux années au Brésil, the illustration does not convey the stereotype of the elegant black man. Instead, the black man is barefoot, wears pants and a hat, smokes, and carries his umbrella on his shoulder. He is shown in profile view, and his lips and his nose are exaggerated, giving the engraving a caricatural element. Like other European travelers such as Debret and Ewbank, Biard observed the Carnival celebration, known as Entrudo. During the festivities, Rio de Janeiro’s population, especially black individuals, took to the streets and participated in battles with buckets of water and limões de cheiro, scent-filled wax balls.64 In Deux années au Brésil, Biard comments on this popular custom during Rio de Janeiro’s religious festivals and other festivities. According to him, there were days when one could not go anywhere without being targeted by these projectiles, to the great joy of everybody.

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He adds that several serious accidents resulted from this national amusement and that although he would have been very pleased to distribute some blows when he was the object of this fusillade, the culprits always slipped through his fingers: “I laughed at seeing their wide-open mouth, their white teeth, and their expression of satisfaction; I said to myself softly: ‘poor slaves, this pleasure should not be envied.’ . . . These Negroes of Rio are very funny, in a country where they are [comparatively] less unfortunate, I believe.”65 In expressing compassion for Brazil’s enslaved population, Biard also empathizes with the way enslaved individuals socialized in the streets of Rio de Janeiro by showing his willingness to participate in their revelry. The existence of spaces of sociability where slaves could play, dance, and sing, however, led him to conclude that even though they lived in slavery, these men and women were less unfortunate than their counterparts in other parts of the Americas. He was able to draw such a conclusion by ignoring the distinctions between the slaves’ living conditions in urban and rural areas. Confronted daily with slavery during his stay in Rio de Janeiro, Biard made another brief comment about the institution, even though his criticism is not very elaborate. The painter explains that the entire city of Rio de Janeiro was up on September 7, 1858, to celebrate the anniversary of the independence of Brazil, and he mentions that there was a solar eclipse that day: “Hundreds of Negroes shouted with all the force of their lungs: Viva a independência do Brasil! Thus the poor Negroes, without understanding what they were saying, proclaimed the independence of a people to whom they are slaves.”66 Biard’s commentary, hidden discreetly in a narrative of Brazilian independence celebrations, can be interpreted as a criticism of Brazilian slave society. Nevertheless, his use of the term Negro as a synonym for slave shows his inability, or rather unwillingness, to distinguish among enslaved, freed, and freeborn black individuals, for during this period Rio de Janeiro had large freeborn and freed black populations. Furthermore, the quotation reveals that even though many Africans and Afro-Brazilians were still living in slavery, some of them publicly expressed sentiments of belonging to the young nation. Another passage from the same chapter shows how insensitive the painter was to the horrible conditions of slavery. He compares the living conditions of the enslaved population to that of European immigrants by saying, “I do

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not know exactly what should be done to make life possible for the immigrants in their first years, but I have seen immigrants who were not given enough, hence I conclude that in general the plight of Negroes in Brazil is preferable to that of the colonists.”67 The fact that Biard arrived at this conclusion a few months after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro suggests that he quickly adopted a slavocratic mentality. It also shows that he subscribed to the idea, promoted in several nineteenth-century European travelogues, that Brazilian slavery was in fact lenient and that the hardships suffered by enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians were indeed comparable to the tribulations experienced by white European immigrants. During his sojourn in Rio de Janeiro, while Biard stayed in the royal palace he was able to observe and satirize the maneuvers and the uniforms of the soldiers of Dom Pedro II’s National Guard: “I could see at my ease the soldiers and the officers parading, carrying under their arms their bearskin shakos. Before my eyes they performed clever maneuvers in which I noticed with pleasure the precision that characterizes national guards everywhere.”68 He explains that like Dom Pedro II’s official garb, the soldiers’ uniforms bore several national symbols, including representations of coffee and tobacco leaves (mistakenly identified by the painter as tea leaves), which emphasized Brazil’s tropicality. According to Biard, the uniforms varied according to the various regiments, some imitating tiger skin and others decorated with oil paintings of the two national plants. Complementing the text, the illustration Les sapeurs de la garde nationale de Rio de Janeiro (The Soldiers of the National Guard of Rio de Janeiro) sheds light on the physical traits and uniforms of the four black soldiers of the regiment of sappers, or military demolitions specialists (porta-machado) (see figure 3.9).69 Like the black dandy in the previous illustration, the sappers in this image are portrayed in a caricatural manner. The soldiers are wearing gloves, shakos, and aprons, an identifying element of the uniform of the sappers of the National Guard. Instead of bearing rifles or spears, the members of this regiment carry axes, which are also depicted on their aprons.70 Their physical traits, especially their lips and their noses, are overemphasized. In particular, the head of the soldier on the left resembles the heads depicted in the first anthropometry studies, which associated the profiles of blacks with those of monkeys, thereby promoting racist ideals. Many French and British travelers who visited Brazil during the eighteenth

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Figure 3.9.  Les sapeurs de la garde nationale de Rio de Janeiro (The Soldiers of the National Guard of Rio de Janeiro), woodcut signed by François-Auguste Biard, Édouard Riou, and Jules Fagnion in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 89.

and nineteenth centuries, including Amédée-François Frézier (1682–1773), Robert Walsh (1772–1852), and Maria Graham (1875–1842) as well as Rugendas and Debret, described the horrible conditions of the slave markets in Salvador, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro by emphasizing the suffering of the enslaved individuals who were waiting to be sold.71 For Biard, however, a slave auction was the object of satirical commentary. The woodcut Une vente d’esclaves, à Riode-Janeiro (A Slave Sale in Rio de Janeiro) depicts a slave sale the painter attended in Rio de Janeiro (see figure 3.10). The various characters in the scene include the auctioneer, the barefoot enslaved individuals for sale, and the slave buyers. The image also depicts a variety of objects such as cabinets, musical instruments, tables, mattresses, and even a horse. Although the various characters are intermingled, their clothes and physical traits differentiate their levels of social status. The location of the sale is crowded with people and objects, and while the various characters interact, the slaves wait passively to be sold. A white man examines the teeth of the enslaved woman whom the auctioneer is offering for sale, while her child clings to her leg, terrified of being separated from his mother. Despite the drama underlying the scene, Biard portrays the slave sale as an amusing caricature, exaggerating the physical traits of both the black and the white participants. He emphasizes the commodity status of enslaved individuals

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Figure 3.10.  Une vente d’esclaves, à Rio-de-Janeiro (A Slave Sale in Rio de Janeiro),

woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard” and Adolphe Gusmand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 95.

by showing them being inspected like cattle and sold along with pieces of furniture and other objects. Moreover, the satirical commentary continues in a second engraving, which shows the outcome of the slave sale. The image Retour d’une vente d’esclaves à Rio-de-Janeiro (Return from a Slave Sale in Rio de Janeiro) shows the white slave buyer returning home with his new purchases: a horse, a mattress, two enslaved men carrying other objects bought in the sale, and the enslaved woman as well as her child (see figure 3.11). Behind them, an enslaved man, who presumably accompanied his master to the slave sale, gestures as if pressuring the new slaves to move along. The arrogant attitude of the white man contrasts with the resignation of the recently bought slaves. If the caricatural approach in the two engravings ridicules a slave society in which men and women are sold like commodities, in the text that accompanies the two woodcuts Biard does not express any concern about the living conditions of the slave population and the brutality of the Brazilian slave

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Figure 3.11.  Retour d’une vente d’esclaves à Rio-de-Janeiro (Return from a Slave Sale in

Rio de Janeiro), woodcut signed by Jean-François-Auguste Trichon, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 99.

system. While Biard was living in Rio de Janeiro, despite the end of the African slave trade, the internal slave trade continued to be very active. Indeed, just one year before the painter’s arrival in Brazil, Paraná, the same steamer that brought him to Pará, had transported 240 slaves from Maranhão to Rio de Janeiro.72 Biard explains that the slave sale he witnessed was held in a private home after the death of the head of the household and that the slaves were being sold along with objects from the estate. He adds that he did not see much difference between a sale in a market and in a private residence, except that in the market the auctioneer was mounted on a “cheese crate and in the other sale, the auctioneer was standing on a chair, a small hammer in hand; in the midst of round tables, armchairs, and lamps, five male and female Negroes sat. . . . These Negroes were sold for six thousand francs. One single buyer purchased two women, a table, and a horse.” 73 The painter concludes by stating that he expected to see that they were very sad but that they were not. Perhaps the lack of emotion among the enslaved men and women being sold suggests that they did not have an affective attachment to their master and

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household, hinting that their living conditions were bad and thus contradicting Biard’s assumptions about Brazilian slavery’s leniency. Although Biard does not openly criticize slavery, shortly after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro he expressed surprise that people of modest means were followed by slaves even when there was no need for them: “There was a very small embarrassment that has already arisen several times in Rio. In slave countries, it is customary to carry nothing; I have seen people both very well and not so well dressed being preceded by a Negro carrying packages so small that they could be put in one’s pocket.74 But as time passed Biard quickly came to understand that in Brazil owning slaves was a matter of social prestige. As a result, carrying objects and packages was perceived negatively in a society where only enslaved men and women performed manual work. Under the July Monarchy, before he visited Brazil, Biard executed and exhibited several paintings depicting the Atlantic slave trade.75 Even though these paintings emphasized the horrors of the slave trade and the brutal punishment imposed on slaves, the painter can hardly be considered an abolitionist. Indeed, some of these paintings, which promoted the role France played in combatting the trade and celebrating the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, were aimed at gaining the attention of the art market, because artworks depicting these issues were popular among various audiences. After his sojourn in Brazil, Biard presented in the Salon of 1861 a set of three paintings with themes related to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. The first painting, Emménagement d’esclaves à bord d’un négrier sur la côte d’Afrique (Loading Slaves onto a Slave Ship), depicts enslaved Africans being loaded onto a slave ship. Despite the topic of this painting, which was reproduced in an illustration published the same year in the French magazine L’Illustration, there is no evidence that Biard actually observed the scene he represented.76 The other two paintings were Vente d’esclaves dans les États de l’Amérique du Sud (A Slave Auction in the States of South America), which represented a slave market in South America (and was perhaps based on the engraving Une vente d’esclaves, à Rio-de-Janeiro (A Slave Auction in Rio de Janeiro), even though the slaves sold in this sale were not brought from Africa), and La Chasse aux esclaves fugitifs (The Hunt for Fugitive Slaves).77 Since the opening of the Salon coincided with the beginning of the Civil War in the United States, when the abolition of slavery was a central topic publicly debated in Europe and the Americas, the three paintings certainly

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gained great attention. In an article commenting on the Salon published in the magazine La Semaine des familles, Biard’s work is compared to the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, “helping form the power of opinion that sooner or later acts over the facts.” 78 Because of Biard’s relationship with the Brazilian monarchy, the only way he could criticize Brazilian slave society was through a humorous approach. In Deux années au Brésil, the painter never condemns slavery directly. On the contrary, he argues that “the life of a Negro in Brazil is far preferable to that of the majority of the unfortunate European immigrants. The authorities never fulfill the promises they made to them.” 79 By reproducing the discourse that dissimulates the atrocious living conditions of enslaved men and women in Brazil, he reinforces the idea that Brazilian slavery was benign compared to slavery elsewhere in the Americas, including the Carribbean and the United States. The omnipresence of slave labor in the streets of Rio de Janeiro is also rendered in the wood engraving Dames brésiliennes à Rio de Janeiro (Brazilian Ladies in Rio de Janeiro) (see figure 3.12). The image depicts a Brazilian white woman walking in the street and followed by a line of slaves. In the text that accompanies the woodcut Biard praises the presence of French fashion on Rio de Janeiro’s streets. He states that Ouvidor Street is the meeting place of all the most elegant people showing off their attire in the lights of the shops. The painter’s comments about Ouvidor Street confirm the observations of Debret, who stated in 1831 that the street resembled Vivienne Street in Paris and was almost entirely filled with French shops of all kinds.80 In the 1850s Daniel Kidder and James Fletcher described Ouvidor Street as a combination of Vivienne Street in Paris, Regent Street in London, and Broadway Street in New York.81 At the same time, Biard criticizes Brazilian women for both their dress and their custom of always being followed by enslaved individuals: “As is customary, [they] are always followed by one or two mulattos, two or three Negresses, some young female and male Negroes. The group walks gravely, the husband at the head of the line. In these colorful costumes, I could have recognized the spirit of economy and order that our Frenchwomen do not always have.” 82 The engraving is a caricature of a Brazilian white woman, her son, and the slaves who follow her. Not only are their physical features out of proportion and their traits exaggerated, but to complete the comical quality of the scene

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Figure 3.12.  Dames brésiliennes à Rio de Janeiro (Brazilian Ladies in Rio de Janeiro),

woodcut signed by Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 85.

the painter added a dog at the end of the line, reminding readers that the living conditions of slaves in Brazil were very close to those of animals. Also, although the text mentions that the male head of the household was usually at the front of the line, he is absent from the illustration. Regardless of the humorous tone of Biard’s woodcut, Dames brésiliennes à Rio de Janeiro was undoubtedly based on Debret’s lithograph Un employé du gouvernement sortant de chez lui avec sa famille (A Government Employee Leaving His Home with His Family), published in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil more than twenty years earlier (see figure 3.13).83 Debret’s lithograph, probably the only one in which he expresses humor, represents a government employee going for a walk with his family. The accompanying text reminds readers that black people predominated in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, a statement confirmed by the population estimates of the period. In 1821 the city’s total population was 116,444, whereas the enslaved population consisted of 57,549 individuals.84 Debret, like many other European travelers, comments that it was uncommon to see white women in the streets, for they often remained secluded in the domestic sphere.85

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Figure 3.13.  Un employé du gouvernement sortant de chez lui avec sa famille (A Government Employee Leaving His Home with His Family), in Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, 2, plate 5.

Furthermore, Debret decries the lack of taste of Brazilian women, not only because they dressed in odd styles but also because they wore brightly colored clothing in the Anglo-Portuguese fashion. Indeed, following the transfer of the Portuguese royal court to Brazil and the opening of Brazilian ports to Britain, English manufactured goods dominated the streets of Rio de Janeiro. In his commentary on the lithograph Debret states that families always walked in a line, led by the master—the husband and head of the family, in this case a government employee. The man is immediately followed by his children, the younger before the older, then by his pregnant wife. After the family comes a mucama (a usually Brazilian-born enslaved mulatta domestic servant), who, according to Debret, was “infinitely more distinguished in the service than a Negress.” 86 The rest of the line is formed by the “Negro wet nurse, the slave of the wet nurse, the master’s domestic slave, a young slave who is being trained in service, followed by a new Negro, recently bought, the slave of all the others, whose natural intelligence, more or less active, should be slowly developed by lashes of a whip.” 87

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The satirical engraving illustrates in a straightforward manner the complex dimensions of Brazilian slave society. Owning slaves was more than an economic necessity, it was a matter of social prestige. The order of the characters in the line, their clothing, and their relative sizes show the sexual and hierarchical relations in the family and among the enslaved population. If the domestic slave seems to be somewhat integrated into the family, the new slave is clearly depicted as a commodity. The white male master heading the line is visibly important and distinct from the rest of the group. The two young girls are dressed exactly like their mother, and their hairstyles are also identical. The mucama, who usually had a close relationship with the mistress and provided sexual services to the master, occupies a prominent position in the family hierarchy. She is represented as a mirror of her mistress, dressed in a very similar style.88 However, both the mucama and the wet nurse are barefoot, emphasizing their lower status. The slaves farther down the line are younger and have darker skin. Their clothing and demeanor are more modest than those of the slaves who precede them in the line. Debret’s image emphasizes that white masters and mistresses occupied the highest positions in Brazilian slave society. Moreover, a freeborn mulatto had higher status than a freeborn mulatta, and both occupied a better position than freed mulattos and mulattas. Lower in the social and racial hierarchy were enslaved mulattas and mulattos, then enslaved black men and women. African-born enslaved individuals had lesser status than their ­Brazilian-born counterparts. Even after buying their freedom African men and women continued to be considered foreigners in Brazil.89 Morever, after the Malê Rebellion of 1835 in Bahia, their rights became even more restricted; for instance, they were forbidden to own real estate.90 In this socially and racially hierarchized society, skin color and physical features had major implications for social mobility. The engravings that illustrate Debret’s and Biard’s travelogues shed light on the artists’ understanding of Brazilian daily life and their positions on slavery and the monarchy.91 Debret’s depictions of Rio de Janeiro combined an idealized image of the enslaved population with an emphasis on representing monumental architecture, usually by employing perspective techniques, in the background of the daily scenes. Debret traveled to Brazil as an official artist whose role was, among other duties, to depict historical events and various aspects of the life of the Portuguese royal court in Rio de Janeiro. These elements illuminate the close articulation between the narrative and

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the lithographic imagery in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil. Yet at the time of its publication, Debret’s travelogue was criticized by the Brazilian monarchy and its supporting local elites because of the great attention given to slavery in general and especially to the physical punishments inflicted on enslaved men and women.92 Biard’s representations of Brazilian urban slave life differed from the portrayals developed by other European artists and travelers. Deux années au Brésil is closer to the travel account genre in the sense that narrative and adventure occupy central places and commentary is synonym with satire. Even though Biard was an official painter during the July Monarchy, and despite his good relations with Emperor Dom Pedro II, he traveled to Brazil by his own means and declined a teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts. His relative independence and the stage he was at in his career allowed him to formulate humorous commentaries about Brazilian slave society, sometimes from an unexpected point of view. Even though he did not take a clear position against slavery, his prejudices against populations of color, reinforced during his sojourn in Rio de Janeiro, followed him in the next phase of his travel in the tropical forests. Indeed, during his excursion in the Amazonia, once he started developing closer relations with Native Brazilians, he constantly received help from black individuals, who from his point of view were more reliable than the indigenous peoples. Like Biard, Debret was not an abolitionist. Daryle Williams points out that “his images of the entrance to Guanabara Bay, drawn from nature, [do not] make any direct reference to the presence of negreiros (slave ships), of which approximately fifty would join the Calpe in crossing into Guanabara Bay in 1816.”93 Debret’s idealized vision of black men and women, and the fact that the Portuguese royal family sponsored his activities in Brazil, did not prevent him from using some of the lithographs in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil to denounce the physical punishment that enslaved people suffered, even though this denunciation is nuanced by his teleological conception of history and the construction of a racial taxonomy in which whites are superior to blacks. Satire as Commentary on Brazilian Society

Unlike Debret, who had a clear intention of offering an objective view of Brazil and who represented white and black populations integrated into the

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city’s landscape, Biard preferred to portray Brazilian urban settings by focusing on scenes of daily life and featuring Brazilian black individuals, especially those who struck him as curious or picturesque because of their activities, their physical features, or the way they were dressed. Most renderings of urban daily life in Deux années au Brésil depict an action in which humor predominates. In these engravings Biard is the main character, located in opposition to black Brazilians, whom he often ridicules. The simplified formal treatment of these caricatural portrayals, similar to that found in comic books, conveys stereotyped images. Nevertheless, this humorous approach contributes to the construction of an audacious satirical commentary that could not be conveyed in the text. Although the information about Deux années au Brésil’s reception in France is very limited, it did become quite popular in French circles. Moreover, even though the travelogue was not well-known in Brazilian circles, according to contemporary accounts the Brazilian expatriates living in France felt embarrassed by the way Biard mocked their home country and its inhabitants; this suggests that the image of Brazil conveyed in the travelogue was largely disseminated by the time it was published.94 Yet given his collaboration with the monarchy, Biard evidently did not intend to offer any serious comment on Brazilian society and its elites. Consequently, his satirical representations of Brazilian daily life and slavery, which sometimes also ridicules individuals of European origin, are powerful and unexpected means of criticism.

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In the Womb of the Rain Forest •

in orientalist romanticism the desert and the palaces, markets, and minarets of the built landscape are central features that symbolize millenary cultures. In contrast, representations of the rain forest, with its giant and centennial trees, are related to the primitive and sacred aspect of nature in which the human presence is nonexistent or remains insignificant. The representation of the luxuriant and mysterious rain forests of South America is one of the main characteristics of nineteenth-century tropical romanticism. In this chapter I examine the multidimensional depictions of the Brazilian rain forest in Deux années au Brésil. Although the woodcuts illustrating Biard’s travelogue are consistent with a long-standing tradition of representations of the forest by European artists such as the Count of Clarac, Debret, and Rugendas, I argue that Biard’s representations of the jungle are innovative because of their central narrative dimension. As Biard’s journey progresses, the rain forest, which to some extent symbolizes Brazil, is represented as a dynamic entity that is both seductive and dangerous. Whereas some engravings render the forest as a mystical and peaceful place of origin, several others present it as a site of conflict, action, danger, and death. In this chapter I also show how the jungle gradually becomes the stage for the interactions of Biard with several natural forces, represented by the fauna, and with various characters, especially black and Native individuals. I explain that in Deux années au Brésil the rain forest acts as an antagonistic force as well as a stage on which the painter performs the role of a hero fighting to survive and overcome the dangers of the tropical world. I argue that

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unlike the traditional romantic renderings of the forest as a sublime and picturesque space, in Biard’s travelogue the jungle is a setting that allows his multifaceted character to emerge and perform different activities as hunter, painter, and naturalist. These various dynamic and original features constitute one of the most important contributions of Deux années au Brésil to the development of tropical romanticism. Exploring the Rain Forest

Biard states that it was his taste for adventure that led him to travel to Brazil. By the third chapter of his travelogue his adventurer character begins to increase its presence in the narrative, and it remains prominent until the end of the travelogue. He emphasizes the audacity required to leave his loved ones and the courage one needs in the presence of the potential dangers of some trips. He adds, “I felt lonelier in the streets of Paris than in the middle of the trackless forest, without exit, where at every step I could encounter danger, where I had a thousand chances of getting lost, never to return.”1 By representing the rain forest as a living entity with which he quickly develops a sense of affinity, the painter presents himself as a brave man who adapts easily to the difficulties he faces. The adventure intensified when Biard left Rio de Janeiro to settle in the forests of Espírito Santo. He first spent time in Nova Almeida and then settled in Santa Cruz. Biard was not the first French traveler to visit Espírito Santo, however. In 1818 Auguste de Saint-Hilaire (1799–1853) visited the province as well as Nova Almeida. He dedicated several pages of his 1833 travelogue to describing this village, its inhabitants, and their customs.2 From Nova Almeida Biard moved to Santa Cruz, an important center of Italian immigration in Espírito Santo that today belongs to the municipality of Ibiraçu. In Santa Cruz Biard became the guest of “Mr. X.” Although the painter never reveals the name of his Italian host, with whom he had numerous conflicts, it was most likely Pietro Tabacchi, who became a leader of Italian colonization in the province. Tabacchi may have arrived in Espírito Santo by 1851 and bought land in Santa Cruz to develop the trade in jacaranda wood.3 Tabacchi’s bad reputation was confirmed in later years. His plans to organize Italian immigration in Espírito Santo, to which Biard refers in his book, were finally accomplished in 1874, when he created the colony Nova

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Trento with 386 immigrants from Trento, Italy. However, that year the Italian immigrants began to revolt against the living conditions in the colony, and Tabacchi’s enterprise eventually failed. While in Santa Cruz, Biard was interested in painting the wildlife and the Natives, and to this end he attempted to gain their trust. After several days the painter believed he had been accepted among the Natives. Yet since the beginning their relationship had been ambiguous. On the one hand, his interest in the Natives was merely utilitarian. On the other hand, he tried to convince his readers that he did not care about losing credibility among the whites: “I was no longer a stranger to them [the Natives], but if I gained importance among the Indians, adults and children, I lost standing among the whites, which I did not mind.”4 Indeed, Biard was willing to do whatever was necessary to convince the Natives to pose for him. From Santa Cruz Biard eventually visited the virgin forest, traveling along a river he calls Sanguaçu—probably the Piraquê-açu (also Piquiassú) River, close to Santa Cruz.5 In his excursions to the forest he discovered several specimens of exotic fauna—the sapo-boi (bullfrog), the bicho-do-pé (chigoe flea, or jigger), the aranha caranguejeira (bird-catching spider), the surucucu (pit viper, common name bushmaster, genus Lachesis), the gato-selvagem (wildcat), and the onça (jaguar)—as well as ants and crabs. In most cases Biard uses the Portuguese vernacular names for the animals and provides French translations. Even though most of these tropical animals and insects were also found in countries other than Brazil, his use of this nomenclature is intended to increase the aura of exoticism in both his descriptions and the narrative in order to transport the reader into an unknown universe. When Biard arrived in the Amazonian forest, the difficulties of living far from urban settings increased, and conflicts with his domestic servants intensified. His incursion into this exotic universe was accentuated by the departure of his French servant, Benoît. In the narrative Benoît symbolizes French civilization transformed and corrupted by the “savage” Brazilian life: he drank too much, disobeyed Biard’s orders, and barely spoke French. Without his servant Biard was even more distant from France and its urban life: “When boarding I saw Mr. Benoît on the dock; as long as he was in sight, he did not leave his walking stick; his pose was as regular as usual. He lost his last chance to break the rest of my [photo-developing] chemicals and damage my last pair of pants.”6 The painter was left alone with his Murá

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guide, Polycarpe. Biard’s growing mistrust of Polycarpe gradually increases the tension and suspense, which helps to build up Biard’s character as the hero of the narrative. Sometimes the narrative takes an ironic twist. Wanting to indirectly invoke the fact that travelers were often accused of lying about their experiences and acquit himself of intentional fabrications, Biard recalls how he formed his collection of exotic objects. During a trip to Egypt, near the location of the battle of Abu Qir he found a “bone bleached by the sun and sand of the desert,” and when he was in Milo and Paros in Greece he bought “small Greek vases, lachrymatory, etc.” 7 Later, however, the painter discovered the real provenance of the objects of his collection. A friend who was passing through Lyon informed him that his Greek vases had been made in England. Indeed, the excavation of these very valuable objects, which had been undertaken before their eyes, was a pretty commercial speculation activity that the locals allowed themselves from time to time to charm the foreigners. Despite this pitfall, Biard explains, he kept one relic, a bone that he always looked on fondly. But then one day a doctor told him that it could not be anything other than a sheep’s bone. The painter lamented that “this last blow was hard, and since that time I have become very indulgent of travelers who are wrong. I humbly request those who read me to do the same for me.” 8 Biard’s problems intensified progressively as he penetrated the Amazonia’s interior. He found himself alone with three Amerindian paddlers and two monkeys that he named Amazonas and Rio Negro. Because his guides were often drunk and showed up late, his feeling of freedom alternated with a fear of being abandoned by his paddlers: “Free, yes! But at the mercy of my guides. This was imprudent enough, they could now have their own way with me.”9 At this point the travel account increasingly becomes a narrative of a succession of trials. Each hurdle is marked in the text with the Portuguese expression Vamos! (Let’s go!). After paddling a very long distance to reach the Madeira River, Biard and his guides were attacked by mosquitoes and mutucas (horseflies). Yet despite the difficulties the painter shows a growing capacity to adapt to Brazilian tropical life.10 Biard and his companions also traveled along the Negro and Madeira Rivers. His travelogue descriptions of Amazonian towns alternate with descriptions of the natural environment and numerous narratives of

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adventures in which the painter is the protagonist who fights to survive in the rain forest. Finally the painter arrived in the town of Canomá, where he met a group of Mundurucu, several of whom agreed to be models for him. The navigation of the Madeira River is one of the most dynamic passages in Deux années au Brésil. The chapter’s narrative alternates between the trials he endured and the successful adventures in which he was a hero. At various stops along the Madeira, Biard was able to meet several Native groups, including other Mundurucu as well as the Arara. During this expedition Biard’s health declined: “Gradually my health was altered, I hardly ate anything and drank a lot of water so that I sometimes felt very weak, so weak that I spent several days not working.”11 Despite the various frequent hindrances that appeared along the way, the artist transformed himself into a painter-adventurer, someone who overcame every obstacle and succeeded in painting a great number of portraits of Natives. Yet he discovered a recurrent problem: the Natives who initially agreed to serve as models very often changed their minds, for reasons he could not figure out. Furthermore, most Natives did not speak Portuguese but spoke only the língua geral amazônica (Amazonian lingua franca), which Biard and his travel companions did not understand.12 The painter met Mundurucu individuals who, he reported, were once cannibals. He showed an interest in their customs and observed several of their rituals, including a young man’s coming-of-age ceremony before his wedding and a young woman’s puberty rite. But Biard’s health worsened, and eventually he decided to return to Pará and prepare to return to France. On his return journey to Pará he visited the towns of Canomá and Abacaxis and the region of Maués. As he neared Pará his health improved, so he decided to travel to North America before returning to Europe. The narrative of his journey in the rain forest still had a few new surprises, however. On his arrival in Maués his paddlers abandoned him. With the help of a colonel and the police chief he eventually hired three Mawe men to paddle as far as Vila Bela (present-day Parintins) to complete his journey in the Amazonia. As he explored the Brazilian rain forests Biard narrated several episodes in which he faced imminent danger: encountering wild animals such as alligators or stepping in quicksand without any warning from his guides. These events, which become increasingly frequent, create a tension that further intensifies the suspense of the narrative. This succession of natural and

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human obstacles highlights the hero’s quest for the coveted object: knowledge and representation of the Brazilian world. Eventually the tension and suspense created by his distrust of his guides bursts. Captain João, the Mundurucu leader who came to his rescue, explained to him why the Amerindians who had agreed to pose for him backed out at the last minute: Polycarpe had been telling the other Natives that many people in the country of whites had no heads and that Biard’s goal in drawing indigenous models was to steal their heads and place them on the bodies of these whites. This event was the culmination of the conflict between Biard and Polycarpe. The hero’s revenge comes near the end of the travelogue, when in a fit of anger Biard almost succeeds in strangling Polycarpe, who represents an antagonistic force. The hero Biard becomes even stronger, and even though disease threatened him until the last pages of the narrative, he managed to extend his trip to North America. Biard’s adventure was actually well calculated. On his arrival in Pará Biard surrounded himself with French individuals who could help him during his journey. In Belém Biard met the president of the province and a Mr. Froidfond, the French consul in Pará, for whom he had a letter of recommendation written by his friend and benefactor Théodore Taunay, the French consul in Rio. Through Froidfond Biard met a French engineer, a Mr. Gingembre, who knew the Natives of the region. Gingembre is the one who hired Benoît, the elderly Frenchman, who was a longtime resident of the region. Despite all these arrangements Biard was still having difficulty gaining access to the interior of the Amazonia, where he hoped to meet and paint the Native populations. When he expressed his desire to penetrate the rain forest, Froidfond was not encouraging: “Virgin forests! But there are not any, or you must go very far.” Biard did not give up, however: “I will have it, even if I must go up to Peru!”13 In Belém Biard built himself a hut in the forest, not far from the city. In addition he visited the islands of Arapiranga, Onças, and Marajó. On Arapiranga he was warmly welcomed at a fazenda (plantation) and decided to settle there to paint Native and black individuals. For fifteen days he painted at ease for the first time since he had left Europe. According to him he could choose his models from among the various individuals of color who lived in this fazenda, including a woman he identifies as a mameluca and a black woman. He also started photographing several Native individuals.14

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On his journey toward the interior of the Amazonia Biard continued to benefit from good relations with the local authorities. Learning of Biard’s intention to go to Manaus, the provincial governor provided him with a steamer ticket for the journey. Yet just before the painter left for Manaus and the Amazonian interior he had a falling out with his domestic servant Benoît. Forced to find another man to be his guide on the journey, Biard hired Polycarpe, who had moved to Pará a year earlier. This episode marks an important change: the first time the painter decided to rely on a Native man to replace his French compatriot, who had proved to be unreliable. In Manaus, the capital of the province of Amazonas, the painter settled in to observe and paint Native groups.15 Once again Biard developed his connections with local authorities, including the police chief, the provincial governor, a French-speaking judge, and a Brazilian colonel who offered his hospitality.16 On a visit to the colonel’s home the painter realized how famous he was in this country. His works, which often illustrated French magazines, were well-known to the French who were residing in northern Brazil.17 During his stay in Manaus Biard built a hut in the forest close to the city and purchased a canoe in order to explore the Amazonia. A constant presence in the text and engravings of Deux années au Brésil, the canoe is more than a means of transportation. It also symbolizes the exotic and remote natural setting. Gradually the canoe became Biard’s home as well as a kind of mediator that led him through the Amazonian world and allowed him to come in contact with the least known and deepest portions of the Brazilian wilderness. A Multidimensional Representation of the Rain Forest

Mary Louise Pratt has observed that a global consciousness began to emerge in Europe in the eighteenth century. During the first decades of the nineteenth century this knowledge of the nature, landscapes, and inhabitants of other continents became closely associated with the development of natural history, which was especially marked by the contributions of scientists like Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin.18 Even though most eighteenth-century accounts of travel in Brazil are not illustrated, they do contain crucial information about the rain forest that served as references for later exploratory and scientific expeditions, especially in the Amazonia. Charles-Othon-Frédéric-Jean-Baptiste de Clarac, the Count of Clarac

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(1777–1847), was a pioneer in disseminating the image of the Brazilian rain forest in France. An archaeologist, a mineralogist, a zoologist, a chemist, and an artist, he was a member of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts as well as the curator of the antiquities section of the Louvre Royal Museum, as it was then known. He also published several works, including Têtes antiques (Antique Heads, 1809), Fouille faite Pompei (Pompeii Excavations, 1813), the six-volume Musée de sculpture antique et moderne (Museum of Ancient and Modern Sculpture, 1826–1853), and Manuel d’histoire de l’art (Art History Handbook, 1847). The latter was published posthumously. Like Debret and Taunay, the Count of Clarac was Napoleon Bonaparte’s partisan. In this capacity he participated in the campaigns against Poland and Russia as ordnance officer to the Duke of Enghien. He traveled to Brazil in May 1816 on board the frigate Hermione as a member of an expedition of naturalists and scientists that included Auguste de Saint-Hilaire. The Count of Clarac’s role was to serve as an assistant to the Duke of Luxembourg, who was an extraordinary ambassador of King Louis XVIII in charge of negotiating the transfer of French Guiana with Prince Regent Dom João. Back in France two years later, the Count of Clarac used the several studies he made of the Brazilian rain forest to compose a watercolor titled Forêt Vierge au bord du Rio Bonito, au Brésil (Brazilian Virgin Forest on the Bank of the Bonito River, in Brazil), which he exhibited in the Salon of 1819.19 The image was made popular by a later engraving by Claude Fortier (1775–1835) taken from the original watercolor. The Count of Clarac’s representation of the virgin forest was based on his sketches of the forests along the banks of the Bonito River in Rio de Janeiro and on later studies of tropical plants that Prince Maximilian Wied-Neuwied made in the conservatory of his castle in Neuwied, Germany. For Humboldt, the Count of Clarac’s drawing was the more faithful representation of the Brazilian rain forest.20  The term virgin forest refers to the ideal that no human being has ever entered the forest. By drawing the jungle, the Count of Clarac represented himself as the first man to have penetrated the unexplored universe of the rain forest, which he depicted in detail by emphasizing the diversity of tree trunks, branches, and leaves that fill the composition. Unlike traditional landscapes, this rendering lacks any sky and hence any horizon. In the midst of the forest a small river and the stones of the riverbed are visible, in addition to three very small Amerindian figures, highlighted

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by a beam of light. In this new representation of the rain forest, the human dimension is insignificant compared to the immensity of the jungle and its primeval trees. But given that the jungle is supposedly “virgin,” one can assume that in the Count of Clarac’s mind the Natives, who are fully integrated into the setting, are not human but rather belong to the animal kingdom, an idea that persisted in other later renderings of the tropical forest by other artists and travelers. Yet the count’s representation of the Brazilian rain forest was a pioneering image. Displayed in the Salon, it clearly influenced other artists who traveled to Brazil and represented its rain forests during the nineteenth century. Following in the Count of Clarac’s footsteps several years later, Rugendas represented the Brazilian rain forest in several lithographs of his travelogue Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil. Like the count’s image, Rugendas’s lithographs (based on his sketches and watercolors) emphasize the monumental size of the tropical vegetation compared to the small size of the human characters. Rugendas’s tropical forest is the habitat of Amerindians and animals, a space in which human beings remain mere details. Likewise, a section of Debret’s Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil is also dedicated to the virgin Brazilian forests. Debret’s plates follow the tradition started by the Count of Clarac by depicting the jungle as a profusion of trunks, branches, and leaves, forming diagonal lines that cross the composition in all directions. The vegetation assumes strange forms, creating spectacular effects of light and shadow. Amerindians are the only humans portrayed in the forest environment, and their small size contrasts with the magnitude of the flora. Unlike the Count of Clarac, Rugendas, and Debret, who visited forests in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, Biard spent several months in the remote tropical forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonian region, and he was the only well-established nineteenth-century European artist to do so. Because Biard’s main objective was to paint the jungle and its Native inhabitants, the engravings of Deux années au Brésil represent the rain forest from various points of view and in different states. In some images detail is favored over the larger view. Like the earliest images in sixteenth-century travelogues, these woodcuts are not intended to convey new information or to introduce new ways of representing the forest. Instead they are primarily designed to give the French reader a detailed inventory of Brazil’s exotic flora.

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At the same time, by providing these detailed renderings Biard associates his travel account with nineteenth-century scientific travelogues. Indeed, in an article published in the French newspaper Le Temps announcing the publication of Biard’s travelogue, the reporter stated that “those who love natural history will find great pleasure in the descriptions at the same time lively and faithful delivered by the author with his pen and pencil.”21 In these engravings the leaves and branches are carefully represented by lines and shades, yet the painter usually fails to identify the species of plants and flowers he depicts. In addition, other small illustrations of Deux années au Brésil show partial views of the rain forest. These images, of various formats, pass almost unnoticed at first glance, yet they are one of Biard’s innovative contributions to the tradition of representing the rain forest because they operate like windows that show the jungle’s great trees in close perspective. Like a photograph, this kind of engraving excludes part of the view by rendering only a fragment of the rain forest and leaving room for the viewer’s imagination to mentally reconstruct the entire forest, which is absent from the composition. This novel way of representing the rain forest was perhaps inspired by Biard’s first experiments with photography, as he explains: “I set painting and hunting aside momentarily, and devoted myself to photography in places where certainly nobody had done so before. This inartistic medium, reproducing details that would have taken too long to render, had the advantage of saving my time.”22 Several woodcuts of Deux années au Brésil depict large spectacular views of the tropical forest that become the main setting of the adventurous narrative of Biard’s travel account. In Incendie dans la forêt vierge (Fire in the Virgin Forest), description is present in the detailed representation of the trees to the right of the composition (see figure 4.1). But the narrative dimension is more prominent, emphasizing an action through the dramatic representation of a natural phenomenon. Consequently, the same formal dynamism visible in the woodcut of the burning forest is found in the written narrative. The burning trees symbolize the reflection on life and death, a common theme in romantic paintings. The affiliation with romanticism is particularly visible in the tree located just left of center in the image; it is reminiscent of The Tree of Crows (1822) by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), an artist who probably influenced Biard’s earlier Arctic landscapes.

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Figure 4.1.  Incendie dans la forêt vierge (Fire in the Virgin Forest), woodcut signed by

Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 205.

Although some tropical trees are visible on the right side of the composition, the title of the engraving is the main element informing the reader that the image is set in the rain forest. The importance of the subject is confirmed by the text, in which Biard explains how he painted the burning trees in the forests of Espírito Santo. Although the image does not suggest any kind of human intervention, the text explains that after the trees were cut (probably for agricultural purposes), the remaining trunks were burned on a hot and windy day to facilitate the process: “One morning they came and told me that I could prepare myself. I went around looking for a place to both see and paint a spectacle, which besides the interest of curiosity, was a subject for a painting.”23 The scene of burning trees was also attended by the domestic servants who according to Biard were “attracted by curiosity, and certainly wishing to drink their ration of cachaça, which on these occasions is profusely distributed.” He explains that he had several choices of subjects to paint: “The clusters of branches, the trunks of old trees, the leaves withered by the sun for six months, all were kindled at the same time. . . . Flaming winds in the

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tops of the trees the ax had not slaughtered resembled countless gigantic torches . . . the flames stood, rushed, mingled, and rapidly advanced the vortices of fire and smoke.”24 Despite this dynamic narrative Biard omits any explanation of the agricultural purposes of clearing the ground, a common practice in Brazil. According to other European contemporary travelers, like James Wetherell, the process of clearing the ground consisted of cutting down the large trees, and “after taking away the finest portion of the timber for building purposes and for fences, the whole of the remainder, except the very valuable, such as jacaranda, and pão d’arco, is set fire to.”25 Yet, he explained, sometimes the main forest caught on fire, and the conflagration spread for several miles. The image of the tropical forest as a place of origin, which is characteristic of European romanticism’s conception of nature, also appears in Deux années au Brésil, especially in the sections focusing on the Amazonian region. In one instance Biard is astonished by the quietness found in the interior of the jungle: “What surprised me during this first visit was a deep silence. Nature seemed dead, not a cry was heard, no birds flying, no reptile on the ground, not a bug, nothing! Always nothing!”26 When the painter gradually became more familiar with the new context, the silence and mysterious aura that characterized his first contact with the Amazonian rain forest were replaced with text and illustrations to provide the reader with evidence of his careful observation of the natural environment. For example, in one passage Biard explains the various steps of rubber production by adding that the men who worked collecting the latex made a lot of money and were able to extract up to twenty pounds per day when the woods were good. He also describes in detail how latex was harvested from the rubber tree: “After making a slight cut in the trunk, they attach to it a small earthen pot, and continue tapping from tree to tree as long as they want. On returning, they empty each pot into a large jar, then the liquid is dried in the smoke of a kind of wood that I do not know the name of.”27 In this extract, also accompanied by a woodcut, Biard gives credibility to his travelogue by following the eighteenth-century French tradition inaugurated by Charles-Marie de La Condamine. The latter was a pioneer in providing a detailed description of rubber resin, explaining to French and other European readers some of the numerous uses for rubber: “When it is fresh, one can use molds to give it the shape one wants. It is impervious to rain, but

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Figure 4.2.  Défrichement

(Clearing), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and FranÇois Pierdon, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 464.

it is its great elasticity that makes it more remarkable. From it, one can make sturdy bottles, boots, and hollow balls that flatten when pressed and return to their original shape when no longer pressed.”28 Through his comments on the large amount of rubber that workers could produce, Biard also offers an eyewitness account of the emerging rubber industry in the Amazonia. As Barbara Weinstein explains, the tappers coagulated the latex according to the traditional Amazonian Native fashion: using the smoke of burning palm nuts.29 Biard accurately describes the work of the tapper (seringueiro), but because of the number of intermediaries among the tapper, the receivers, and the eventual exporters in addition to the varying working conditions, it is rather unlikely that the Native individuals who tapped the latex made a lot of money.30 Some engravings, such as Défrichement (Clearing), feature only tree trunks, represented by networks of vertical lines and textures, sometimes blurred, forming an almost abstract composition (see figure 4.2). The lack of a horizon in these woodcuts suggests that as Biard delved ever deeper into the Amazonian jungle, he started losing his points of reference. Unlike Rugendas, who portrayed a clearing in one plate of his travelogue with white and indigenous men, Biard omits any human beings from his engraving.31

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This new environment resulted in representations of the forest in which zones of shadow as well as vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines predominate, creating a network that gives the viewer the illusion of space. Very likely this engraving was based on a photograph, or less probably on the detail of a sketch. This kind of image of the forest by Biard can be associated with the forest sketches by Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) that gave rise to Mondrian’s first abstract paintings. In addition, depending on how these illustrations are placed on the page, they play an almost decorative role. The Rain Forest as the Setting for Action

The illustrations of Deux années au Brésil depict in detail several aspects of the populations, flora, and fauna in the province of Espírito Santo and the Amazonian region. Yet Biard’s most original contribution to the long tradition of representations of the rain forest is to transform the jungle into a setting for action in which he is at the heart of both dramatic and comic events. The painter plays the role of the protagonist who struggles to survive while constantly fighting various antagonists, especially the Natives as well as various forces of nature, including animals and bad weather. In the travelogue these salient conflicts symbolize the values of civilized Europe, represented by Biard, in opposition to savage Brazil, one of the main elements of his contribution to tropical romanticism. The woodcut Chacun de nous coupait, taillait à droite et à gauche (Each One of Us Cut and Carved, Right and Left) illustrates Biard’s first incursion into the forest of Espírito Santo with his Native companions (see figure 4.3). The image features a man chopping tree branches with a machete. Not only does the character look young and vigorous, but because he is wearing short pants (with what looks like a loincloth) and is bare-chested, he could be taken for a Native. Yet a more careful look reveals that he is a white male with a moustache—the protagonist Biard, even though the man in the woodcut does not look like a nineteenth-century sixty-year-old man. The image plays on the ambiguity of European versus Native to enhance the painter as the protagonist of the narrative. Given that Biard is the only character in the illustration, the ambivalence is also apparent in the woodcut’s title, which uses the pronoun us. Through this device Biard erases the barrier between him and the Natives (who,

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Figure 4.3.  Chacun de nous coupait, taillait à droite et à gauche (Each One of Us Cut and Carved, Right and Left), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 213.

though not included in the image, are evoked by the title) by depicting himself as a potential Indian. Moreover, the narration of the episode further reinforces Biard’s role of adventurer. Unlike the engraving, however, the text makes it clear that the painter was not alone in this exploit: “We went this time to explore the woods more inaccessible than those near my house. Each of us, armed with a large sword called a machete, cut and carved right and left. Large numbers of spiders, which we were disturbing, were clinging everywhere on us. I had sometimes dozens on me, sometimes on my body, sometimes on my face.”32 Although the image can be comprehended without the text, the written narrative helps to reveal the new place Biard occupies in the tropical forest. After spending several weeks in the interior of Espírito Santo as the guest of an Italian man with whom he had several conflicts, the painter was finally able to start his excursion in the jungle, where he met some Natives who eventually helped him. The illustration, which shows a new facet of Biard’s character that emerged clearly during his sojourn in the forest, strengthens his position among Brazil’s savage natural environment.

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In other woodcuts the rain forest is a huge and undefined space. Tree trunks form a network of vertical lines that create an almost abstract vision of the forest in which the characters are mere insignificant details and landmarks are lacking. Likewise, the text represents the forest as a labyrinth of alterity where the traveler can get lost, never to return. Still, as the painter and his guides penetrated the Amazonian forest, other dangers started emerging. In one passage, for example, Biard suggests that his Amerindian guide was scared in the Amazonian forest: “Polycarpe was carrying my travel bag, and I was transporting my hunting instruments. . . . I quickly realized that he was afraid, yet without understanding why, because he did not mention a detail he was aware of. For a few nights we had heard noises coming from one side, announcing the presence of one or more jaguars.”33 The immensity of the wilderness hid all sorts of latent conflicts between the characters, as the text reveals. In both the text and the images the Native’s character becomes gradually associated with the wilderness. Though increasingly frightened, Biard never acknowledges his fear but rather shows the reader that he was aware of his potential enemies: “In general, I already knew the Indian. Every day I learned more particulars about him, and he did not win over my mind. I had Polycarpe as an enemy, and later he gave me evidence of it.” The painter takes every opportunity to emphasize his bravery and show knowledge of the Amerindian mind by denigrating Polycarpe: “This wretch knew that I always walked alone when I was not taking photographs. He counted on it. Later, it seemed to me that I had seen him smile when I asked the Negro to show me the way to the woods.”34 As a result, in various passages the text leads the reader to visualize actions that cannot be discerned in the woodcuts because of the small size of the characters. Images and text alternate to create not only situations of suspense but also humorous scenes. Accidents and Storms

As the rain forest emerges as a narrative space in Deux années au Brésil, Biard is exposed to various sorts of accidents and hostile weather phenomena. When he was returning from an excursion in the woods after painting a panorama, a thorn pierced his foot. The injury forced the painter to stay in

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bed for a week. But the story of his suffering is soon replaced by the image of the daring artist, willing to do anything to complete his work: “One morning I took my luggage, and twisting cloths around my legs to protect my injury and avoid others, I took more than three hours to arrive at the waterfall. This is how I saw the end of this fourth panorama, to which I paid my tribute of suffering, like the three others that had preceded it.”35 Nevertheless, after heroizing his own character by emphasizing all the obstacles he was willing to overcome to paint the Brazilian jungle, Biard finishes the passage by denouncing the ingratitude of the Native guide, now clearly identified as his opponent: “During all this time, Polycarpe never offered to accompany me. As for me, I was certain I had him as an enemy, I gradually took his ugly face in such abhorrence that I avoided him as much as was possible.”36 Many of Biard’s adventures and misadventures in the tropical forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia take place on rivers. Entrée de la rivière Sangouassou (Entering the Sanguaçu River) shows one of Biard’s first expeditions by canoe in the forests of Espírito Santo, in which five small human characters struggle against the force of the rapids that shake the boat (see figure 4.4). A sublime conception of nature predominates in the image in which the insignificant humans attempt to transcend the smallness of their existence. The passage narrating the episode reinforces the dramatic effect of the visual image: “We rowed up the River Sanguaçu, still under the influence of the sea, as was easy to see from the mangrove forests extending their intertwined roots well into the water. Half an hour after our departure, repeated rapids came upon us every quarter of an hour . . . the canoe was so filled [with water] that if one of the Indians had not hastened to bail it, we would inevitably have sunk.”37 The lateral view of the image emphasizes the mangroves on the riverbanks in the foreground and the canoe in the midst of the waves. The trees are disproportionately large compared to the canoe, and the large roots are reminiscent of claws that seek to catch the small boat struggling to stay afloat. The forces of nature—represented by the turbulent river, the vegetation, and the giant threatening sky—oppose the insignificant human presence. Other engravings that depict Biard’s adventures in the Amazonia focus on the difficult weather conditions. One engraving represents the same subject as the previous woodcut and borrows several elements from Biard’s

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Figure 4.4.  Entrée de la rivière Sangouassou (Entering the Sanguaçu River), woodcut

signed by Alfred Etherington, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 143.

painting Le Duc d’Orléans descendant le grand rapide de l’Eijanpaïkka, août 1795 (The Duke of Orleans Descending the Great Eijanpaïkka Rapids), painted in 1841. This painting, inspired by Biard’s Arctic expedition, represents a place visited by the Duke of Orleans before he became King of the French. It shows a canoe running a rapid; on the boat are a few characters, central among them the Duke of Orleans. The crew struggles to row against the violent waves. As in the other works of Biard inspired by his trip to the Arctic, in this painting he represents the human struggle to transcend the forces of nature. In the engraving Ouragan sur l’Amazone (Hurricane on the Amazon), the romantic hero who fights the fury of the river is not the future King LouisPhilippe d’Orléans but the painter Biard himself, who plays the role of protagonist (see figure 4.5). Like other engravings in Deux années au Brésil that depict accidents and bad weather conditions, this illustration occupies a full page. Biard and his travel companions are in a canoe, resisting the powerful storm that causes huge waves on the Amazon River. If the theme of natural disasters is typical of romanticism in general, the canoe and Biard’s two monkeys, named Rio Negro and Amazonas, provide

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Figure 4.5.  Ouragan sur l’Amazone (Hurricane on the Amazon), woodcut signed by

Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Alfred Etherington, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 653.

a tropical version of this romantic theme in Biard’s narrative: “In a few moments, and before we could reach the other bank, the storm burst upon us. A torrential rain, mingled with hail, made us fear that water would fill our canoe. . . . The poor monkeys mingled their cries with the voice of the storm. When the lightning stopped, we were left in complete darkness.”38 In the image, as in the text, the great winds and waves play the role of antagonist, whereas the Native Miguel on board the canoe plays the role of adjuvant, supporting the protagonist’s action. The areas of shadow and light increase the dynamism and tension of the composition. In addition, the tremendous height of the waves against the boat and the anxiety on the two characters’ faces contribute to dramatizing the scene. Biard writes, “It would be impossible to say how long this scary navigation lasted. The canoe, carried by the current and pushed by a strong wind, was spinning around, and it was impossible to direct it with our helpless paddles. One moment we thought we saw land above the surface of the water.” But even though the text narrates the story in an equally dramatic way, the passage ends with the helpless hero being able to retake control of the action:

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“However, this gave me some hope. I took this big stick . . . I sank it into the water, at first unsuccessfully, but I persisted, fortunately, because eventually I felt the bottom.”39 Like many other European travelers who visited the Amazonia, Biard needed Native individuals to guide him on his expedition, and he hired a guide in addition to Polycarpe. While in Manaus, he went to see the “chief of the Indians, a Portuguese man, who supervised the tasks to which they are subjected.”40 Before Biard’s departure, the local authorities assigned to the painter a member of the National Guard, who they said would impose obedience on the two Native guides, “who are kind of savages, barely civilized, who are not able to do anything requiring reason.”41 In the end Biard left Manaus with Polycarpe, a guard named Zeferino, and another guard who is not named. The woodcut L’intérieur du canot (The Canoe’s Interior) shows the inside of the vehicle of Biard’s adventure in the Amazonia (see figure 4.6). Although the image depicts the boat in motion, its main intent is to show in detail the interior of the canoe, whose structure consisted of longitudinal wood beams lashed together with lianas and covered with palm leaves, very common in the Amazon region.42 The cramped space seems amplified by the perspective employed, in which each object finds its place. Biard describes, “On my little palm parquet, an adequately thick mat played the role of a bed: it covered the full extent of my retreat. I placed all around me, within reach of my hand, all my bottles for photography, well protected with straw, and my provisions, butter and oil (just in order not to make an error).”43 Biard adds that he was also transporting his painting and photography tools, including albums of packaging paper, “my pencils, my knife, and my glasses; tools to dissect and stuff, money in large copper coins, my powder, my lead, and my casings; and finally, in a soap crate, my food and my calabash for fetching water, I had just enough room to lie down and put my arms where I could.”44 Although the text does not describe the characters on board the canoe, in the woodcut the painter appears in the foreground, lying on a mat among various objects. In the background Polycarpe and a guard are paddling, whereas Zeferino, the guard wearing a shako, is featured in the middle ground.45 The canoe appears as a symbol of movement, a mediating element between the painter’s European world and the Brazilian wilderness. Moreover, the point of view of this image, an inside view of the canoe from

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Figure 4.6.  L’intérieur du canot (The Canoe’s Interior), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 477.

the perspective of the travelogue’s characters, allows the readers to take part in the adventure. Another adventure in the tropical forest is featured in the woodcut Chute dans l’eau (Fall in the Water), which depicts the canoe pulled up on the riverbank for the night (see figure 4.7). A closer look shows a figure plunging into the water with only his feet visible above the surface. Although the diving character cannot be identified in the illustration, the corresponding text reveals who he is: “One night I was lying on the luggage, overwhelmed with lassitude. I did not intend to sleep because I had not pulled out my mat, my tent, nor my coat. Gradually I fell asleep . . . I woke up with a dip in the river.”46 Despite the unpleasantness of the episode, the woodcut and the text offer a humorous take on the situation. Like a snapshot, the image captures a moment of the action. Showing only Biard’s feet, the woodcut resembles a cartoon by portraying the accident with a minimum of elements. The other human characters in the canoe are almost imperceptible. Two subtle sleeping

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Figure 4.7.  Chute dans l’eau (Fall in the Water), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 621.

silhouettes are barely visible, and a third man is noticeable only by his two legs sticking out from the covered part of the canoe. The setting is in darkness, and the atmosphere created by the formal treatment of the image contrasts with the humor of the scene. Hunting Scenes

Several engravings illustrate Biard encountering or hunting wildlife, which was also a favored theme in Édouard Riou’s personal artistic work. Some of Biard’s woodcuts convey amusing encounters with monkeys, ocelots, turtles, reptiles, ants, butterflies, and jaguars. The woodcut Chasse aux singes à la sarbacane (Hunting Monkeys with Blowguns) is a partial view of the luxuriant Amazonian tropical forest, in the middle of which are three human figures (see figure 4.8). It portrays a hunting episode from the period in which Biard was living among the Mundurucu. The text that accompanies the illustration reinforces the detailed picturesque representation of the rain forest. Biard first describes the long hunting

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Figure 4.8.  Chasse aux singes à la sarbacane (Hunting Monkeys with Blowguns), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 583.

blowguns and explains how they were employed by the Natives: “The young Indian was carrying a long blowgun nearly twelve feet long and a light quiver that seemed varnished. In this quiver there were a dozen small pieces of very hard wood, one side highly sharpened and the other filled with a cotton ball.” The narrative then follows the various steps of the hunting process: “We followed single file a narrow path in the middle of the forest, with only the exact amount of room we needed to slip past the overflowing plants on each side. My guides put their fingers on their mouths, and we left the trail to sit, or rather lie down, under a large tree.” But soon the story moves on to a detailed description of the rain forest trees “whose branches, falling to the ground, had pushed up other new branches which grew again, thus forming a small forest where the lianas running up and down on all sides locked us in thousands of networks.”47 The image’s point of view, like the text’s, is sufficiently distant to provide a meticulous overview of the scene, in which the protagonist and his adjuvants are barely noticeable through the vegetation. Despite the luxuriant jungle the blackened silhouette of Zarari, the Mundurucu man who is using

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the blowgun, is identifiable. Biard is also clearly visible in the middle of the vegetation because of his white coat and hat, but João, the second Native, blends in with the foliage. Like the monkeys, the Natives are represented as small black silhouettes. Their representation is characteristic of tropical romanticism: fully integrated into nature, they do not present any particular physical features, reinforcing the stereotypes of “exotic” populations so common in nineteenth-century European travelogues. Nevertheless, this particular image presents an unusual element. Unlike in most of the engravings in Deux années au Brésil, the protagonist of the action here is not Biard but Zarari, who is followed by the painter and João, who both play the role of adjuvants. This thorough portrayal of the jungle introduces another hunting scene that renders the tropical wilderness as a sacred space of which only the Natives know the secrets. According to Biard the hunters’ silence was interrupted after half an hour by small whistles made by Zarari, who was still immobile: “He probably heard something interesting because he made a slight movement and looked at us in a way that João understood. A moment later I saw jumping from a nearby tree a beautiful monkey, all red, of the mico species; this one was followed by another one, and so on, up to seven.” Zarari blew, and one of the monkeys quickly put its hand on its chest, head, and thigh; scratched each one of these places; and then fell. Biard writes, “Every one until the last one faced the same fate in less than ten minutes, and without a single noise being heard.”48 By adding this detailed narrative of a hunt, Biard once again places his travelogue in a long tradition of French travel accounts of Brazil. In the eighteenth century, La Condamine also described a hunt with blowguns, explaining that the Yameo people of the Amazonia “dip the tip of the little arrows, as well as their bows, in such an active poison that when it is new, it kills in less than a minute the animal at which the arrow was shot.”49 In addition, during the nineteenth century British naturalist Henry Walter Bates (1825–1892), who traveled to the Amazonia with Alfred Russel Wallace and remained there for eleven years, describes in detail the use of a blowgun (or zarabatana). Bates’s travelogue, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, first published in 1863, provides a detailed illustration of the blowgun, the quiver, and an arrow.50 Biard’s interest in recording the hunting episode for posterity is apparent in a later passage in which he depicts himself as an ethnographer and a collector who purchases the Native’s

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Figure 4.9.  Le souroucoucou (The Pit Viper), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard,”

and Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 221.

blowgun: “Back in the huts I bought from Zarari his deadly weapon and tied it to one side of the canoe, because it was too long to be placed elsewhere. It is now displayed in my studio, along with his quiver.”51 Hunting is also the subject of the engraving Le souroucoucou (The Pit Viper), which represents an episode from Biard’s sojourn in the forests of Espírito Santo (see figure 4.9). The image shows a close view of three characters grappling with a snake in the forest. Represented from the back, Biard is the shirtless man in the foreground fighting with the giant snake. In the background are two Indians, who are almost invisible and blend in with the foliage. The action dominates the image even though the tropical forest is represented in detail. The characters, the serpent, and the vegetation are intermixed. The two sources of light, one illuminating the snake and the other one highlighting Biard, give the scene a theatrical aspect. The representation of the forest within which the two Natives almost disappear in the middle of the foliage is typical of tropical romanticism. According to this vision, which is indebted to the first sixteenth-century travelogues, the Natives belong to the forest’s exotic world. In addition, their signs of fear,

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invisibility, and passivity are meant to highlight the presence of the heroprotagonist in the foreground. Although the image borrows several elements from Debret, Rugendas, and the Count of Clarac to represent the rain forest and the Natives, Biard’s self-representation as the adventurous character as well as the narrator is an original contribution to the tradition of European travelogues in Brazil and other tropical areas of the world. At the same time, the woodcut carries an ambiguous element, because Biard’s position as a protagonist is not completely clear. At first sight one might think from his raised arms holding a long stick that he is trying to kill the serpent, but a second look shows that his rifle is slung on his back and that the protagonist is probably escaping from the imminent danger. The image is eventually interpretable with the aid of a long text passage that narrates the episode. The painter had gone to walk in the forest with some Natives when one of them stopped and extended his arm to aim at an object Biard could not see. He then shot at close range the trunk of a tree that he had tried to cross: “What came out made me jump back. I fell backwards in the midst of a bunch of thorns. The pain made me rise up even more strongly, as for the first time I was in the presence of this very dangerous snake, the surucucu. It was wounded to death.”52 Despite the image’s ambiguity, the text explains that the man who killed the surucucu was not Biard but in fact a Native. Yet the Natives are never portrayed as courageous, only as cowardly individuals. A few pages later the painter reemerges as the brave protagonist because he brought home the dead serpent. In addition, to reinforce his intrepid image he reports that while he was skinning the serpent and putting its skin back, his Native companions were so scared that they went to hide in the woods: “They fled into the woods, and remained there during all the time I was engaged in skinning and turning the snakeskin [putting the skin back in place after it had been removed to take the meat], which was very long. I could see a few of them hidden behind tree trunks, with frightened eyes.”53 In reality, the woodcut Le souroucoucou combines two different episodes to reinforce the image of the hero-adventurer who managed to survive in the forest. This is confirmed by the original drawing that inspired the engraving, in which only the serpent is depicted and the painter and the two Natives are absent. Consequently, the engraving, signed by “Riou after Biard” and J. Gauchard, had the humans added as a narrative strategy in order to increase the intensity of the adventure.54

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Figure 4.10.  Chasse au jaguar (Jaguar Hunting), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou

and Adolphe Gusmand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 493.

Biard is also featured in another hunting adventure in the Amazonia represented in the woodcut Chasse au jaguar (Jaguar Hunting) (see figure 4.10). This image shows the hunter-painter on a small sandy beach that is covered with thorny plants. Standing with his legs apart, Biard points his shotgun toward the river, and the white smoke over his head suggests that he has already shot at his target. An animal’s head is visible in the water to the right. To the left, the dark silhouettes of four small human figures are barely visible. One, holding a shotgun, is sitting on the beach, and three others are farther away, standing on the shore. Once again, even though the woodcut appears to show the hero killing an animal (identified in the title as a jaguar), the text instead informs us that the painter was actually entangled in the thorny bushes and failed to shoot: “One of the Indians, occupied for his part with targeting turtles using long arrows barbed with toothed iron, beckoned me to look toward the river. I took a long time to distinguish the object he referred to.” Finally, Biard saw a black point from a long distance, something that looked like a head “that seemed to be coming toward us from an island more than one mile distant. At first sight I thought it was an indigenous coming to visit his compatriots.” But quickly

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the painter discarded this assumption, since the long stretch of water would have made it impossible to see them from so far: “But if it was not a man, what it was then? . . . It was a jaguar swimming right at us. His beautiful head became visible shortly. He had seen us in turn, and as he could not go back to regain the opposite shore, he was forced to land closer to the shore.”55 Biard’s heart started beating loudly, but just as he started to aim his shotgun, the animal turned abruptly and headed to the other side: “He understood. I started running in order to position myself directly in front of him when he would step on the ground and shoot him at close range. But during this maneuver I was stopped short by thorns, creepers all filled with quills. I was barefoot, it was impossible to climb a small hill that separated me from the place where the jaguar was going to land.” Despite this incident the painter shot quickly and touched the jaguar, “because suddenly he put one of his paws on his head, scratching his ear like a cat. I lost sight of him for one instant, and when he reappeared on the other side of the hill, I saw him slink into the thickest woods.”56 This passage, which narrates an episode of self-defense, contradicts the heroic image conveyed in the woodcut’s hunting scene by focusing only on the moment Biard was shooting the jaguar. Other illustrations likewise depict alleged hunting episodes. The woodcut Je pris alors mon fusil par le canon (I Then Took My Gun by the Barrel) shows another adventure in the forests of Espírito Santo (see figure 4.11). Here Biard is the protagonist who was led to fight strong antagonists, represented by savage ocelots: “I saw with amazement three ocelots ready to jump on me. I could not move forward or backward, and I did not have my knife. The left barrel of my shotgun was unloaded, and I could not count on the right one, which I was used to regard[ing] as unnecessary.”57 With his arms raised, holding his shotgun by the barrel, the painter is positioned in a fighting stance, confronting the first ocelot. On the right side a second animal is lying on the ground wounded, and in the background the third ocelot flees into the forest, scared off by the powerful hero. If the engraving is to be believed, the protagonist was able to fight three ocelots at once. However, the text is more realistic and clarifies that only one animal was killed, and with great difficulty. Biard relates that “when by some miracle, the gun went off, I heard a great noise of leaves, but I could not see anything. The smoke did not rise under this dome of verdure. I then took my

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Figure 4.11.  Je pris alors mon fusil par le canon (I Then Took My Gun by the Barrel), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 277.

shotgun by the barrel and, holding it like a club, I took a step forward, trying to pierce the cloud that enveloped me.”58 Biard then explains that he was able to target the ocelots well because two were already wounded. According to him the bigger one rose on its hind legs and both of its eyes were riddled with pellets. Biard struck the animal with the rifle butt and knocked it down, and when it got up he struck it again. Yet the shotgun also touched the tree, and only the barrel stayed in the painter’s hands. Regardless of this accident, Biard was able to cruelly win his fight against the animal antagonists: “I was going to start again when I saw the animal disappear in the bushes. The younger one, which was also injured in the eyes, was lying on his back and mewed pitifully. I had much difficulty to accomplish it, but I managed to break his skull.”59 The exaggerated narrative of this violent hunting episode highlights Biard as the fearless hero who is able to dispatch three wild animals without even using a properly working shotgun. This exploit reinforces his image as a brave European traveler and hunter who is able to violently dominate the tropical world, even if attaining that goal means mercilessly killing tropical animals. After reading such demonstrations

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Figure 4.12.  La tortue (The Turtle), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, FrançoisAuguste Biard, and Louis Henri Brevière, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 555.

of great audacity, the reader may wonder whether in the coming pages the painter will be daring enough to kill his Indian antagonists. Sometimes inoffensive animals defeated the courageous Biard, which adds a humorous tone to the narrative. The woodcut La tortue (The Turtle) renders an episode that occurred during the navigation of the Amazon River (see figure 4.12). After stopping at a sandy beach for the night, Biard’s travel companions were engaged in hunting turtles (Podocnemis expansa). One turtle was injured by an arrow but managed to turn around and escape. The painter, who was lying on the beach, ran quickly to help catch the huge turtle, but it managed to rise up and topple the hero. The nighttime scene depicted in the woodcut shows Biard dressed in a white outfit, falling on his back, with his arms and legs in the air. The big turtle, having evidently caused the protagonist’s fall, occupies the center of the composition. In the background to the left is the barely visible dark silhouette of a Native holding a bow and running to help the protagonist. Placed in the background, the Native is portrayed in the role of the adjuvant. The play of light and shadow highlighting Biard and the giant turtle provides the scene with the desired caricatural effect of dramatization and exaggeration.

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The Painter

Biard’s adventures in Brazil’s tropical forests are associated with his artistic activities. These illustrations, marked by a strongly humorous tone, are characterized by the opposition between the protagonist painter and the antagonist animals that prevent him from working. Le croquis incommode (The Inconvenient Sketch) depicts a lively tropical forest in which six characters are portrayed (see figure 4.13). Even though the Natives played a crucial role in these expeditions in the forest, here, as in other representations of the rain forest that embody tropical romanticism, a small black silhouette symbolizes the Native, who is again fully integrated into the forest like a decorative element. The lianas dangling from the trees pull the reader’s gaze downward, drawing attention to Biard, who is represented as a small figure in the lower right corner of the composition. He is up to his neck in the water, but even in this uncomfortable position he is able to hold a drawing board in his hands in order to depict the forest while crossing the river. Biard’s position in this image is what Louis Marin defined as the “delegate of the enunciation”—the character portrayed in the woodcut is the same one who draws the observed landscape.60 The mild humor does not minimize the image of the heroic painter who is determined to overcome all obstacles posed by the tropical wilderness in order to complete his work. In the text that accompanies the illustrated episode, Biard combines narration of the adventure with a description of the Brazilian forest: “I followed my companions from afar, and sometimes when I had water only up to my neck, by raising my arms, I executed a sketch very slowly. . . . My pose, with my arms in the air, my clothes, my gun on my neck, and the rest of my body submerged, ought to be quite picturesque.” In addition to focusing on his self-image portraying the forest, Biard describes the opulent vegetation: “We passed under the shadow of a forest of bamboos that formed huge and perfectly regular arches above our heads, and . . . on the top of this green canopy I saw hanging masses of orchids, swaying in the wind, like the chandeliers of a cathedral, and fragile lianas holding them in the air that escaped sight for their smallness.”61 By comparing the orchids with cathedral chandeliers, Biard adheres to the romantic idea of nature as a divine force while also emphasizing its insignificant human dimension. Yet even in his romantic tangents the painter always manages to remind the reader of his role as the heroic artist

Figure 4.13.  Le croquis incommode (The Inconvenient Sketch), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, Sargent, and H. H. (monogram of Éloy Laurent Hotelin and Alexandre Hurel), in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 217.

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Figure 4.14.  Présage d’une invasion de fourmis (Omen of an Invasion of Ants), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard,” in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 193.

who is always ready to make sacrifices in order to represent Brazilian wilderness. A similar approach is visible in Présage d’une invasion de fourmis (Omen of an Invasion of Ants), which represents Biard’s artistic activities in Espírito Santo’s rain forest (see figure 4.14). The woodcut portrays a profusion of insects and reptiles heading toward Biard, who is seen in profile, sitting in the center of the composition. The size of the various elements in the foreground is amplified, a device employed by Biard to give both his text and his images an amusing tone. The creeping animals and the painter’s attitude accentuate the humorous and unexpected perspective as well. Wearing his typical hat and beard, Biard paints on a small canvas while resignedly observing the impending invasion. The exaggeration in this woodcut reinforces the painter’s image as someone who overcomes the most difficult obstacles and defies the dangers of tropical wildlife. At the same time, this kind of fantastic depiction prefigures late nineteenth-century representations of the exotic world by painters such as Henri Rousseau (1884– 1910), who offered a modernized image of the jungle.

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The Naturalist

In several passages of Deux années au Brésil Biard refers to his passion for natural history. He often describes the various procedures and instruments he employed to preserve the animals he captured in the forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia. Moreover, despite being a famous artist he apparently identified himself as a naturalist in the passenger manifest of one Amazonian steamer.62 The woodcut Le chat sauvage (The Wildcat) features the painter as the central character (see figure 4.15). A central and close point of view shows the exuberance of the Brazilian tropical flora and highlights Biard’s ability as a naturalist. At the top right of the composition, a wildcat is perched in a tree, almost imperceptible among the vegetation. The three human figures, the bird lying on the ground, and the wildcat are represented in the midst of a lush forest. Biard is closely observing an insect under a magnifying glass; this, and the position of the other two characters holding butterfly nets, conveys the idea that the three men are carrying out a serious field investigation, which gives the travelogue an aura of credibility. Despite the peaceable scene the image also suggests imminent danger. But the corresponding text does not mention scientific observation. Instead the painter narrates that while he was executing a sketch, a wildcat suddenly appeared in the forest. Though initially surprised, he killed the animal with one shot: “I drew flowers, leaves, without losing sight of the treetops. As I did not make any loud noise, one day I heard behind me something walking in the grass. As I turned slowly, I saw a very beautiful wildcat also walking on his side.” In order to avoid making the scene implausible, Biard adds “almost at random,” but this qualification does not put in question the hero’s unwavering courage: “When I tried to get up, with a bound he landed on a tree, and before I could target him, he was at the top. I shot almost at random, and I was very surprised to see him fall, hanging from branch to branch as he came to the ground.”63 Even though Biard’s book is not a scientific travelogue, his self-­ representation as a naturalist in the middle of the luxuriant tropical forest might have influenced the illustration Adventure with Curl-Crested Toucans by Joseph Wood Whymper, published in Bates’s travel account (see figure 4.16).64 If Biard appropriates the demeanor of a scientist in Deux années au Brésil, the naturalist depicted in the engraving of Bates’s travelogue similarly seeks to present himself as an adventurer.65

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Figure 4.15.  Le chat sauvage (The Wildcat), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and

H. H. S. (monogram of Hotelin, Hurel, and Sargent), in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 251.

A New Representation of the Tropical Forest

Unlike previous European travelogues, Deux années au Brésil presents multiple representations of the Brazilian rain forest. In keeping with the tradition inaugurated by the Count of Clarac, Rugendas, and Debret, in various images of the rain forest the Natives are portrayed in ways that position them close to the animal kingdom. Their position in the various images is almost decorative: they are often fully integrated into the forest, and they do not present particular physical features. These renderings reinforce cultural stereo­t ypes that are observable in the first European travel accounts in Brazil, and they contribute to the development of tropical romanticism. Despite these shortcomings, which are clearly visible in the images, in several chapters of the text Biard accurately documents the fauna, the flora, and the inhabitants’ daily lives in the rain forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia. Indeed, Deux années au Brésil’s detailed representations of the rain forest suggest that they were largely affected by the use of photography. Even though none of Biard’s photographs apparently survived, his Brazilian drawings, woodcuts, and paintings that represent a particular moment of

Figure 4.16.  Adventure with Curl-Crested Toucans, by Joseph Wood Whymper, in

Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 346.

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action or provide an almost microscopic view of the jungle were certainly influenced by that emerging medium. Biard’s jungle is not the virgin forest represented by previous European travelers. Instead it is a stage of conflictual interactions, occupied by the painter and by various Native, white, and black characters who play the roles of antagonists and adjuvants. These renderings are predominantly narrative spaces where action occurs and Biard plays the role of protagonist whose various talents as artist, ethnographer, adventurer, and naturalist are emphasized. By portraying Biard as a humorous character engaged in vibrant interactions, Deux années au Brésil breaks the traditional European romantic duality of sublime and picturesque, leading the reader to overlook the improbability of several episodes narrated in the travelogue.

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Evil Natives •

beginning in the sixteenth century, visual and written representations of Brazilian indigenous groups populated the French imagination. These renderings contributed to the cultural stereotyping of Brazilian Natives as naked, ferocious, lazy, and wily cannibals. In this chapter, by analyzing the woodcuts of Deux années au Brésil and comparing them with lithographs produced by other nineteenth-century European artists and travelers, I explore the various ways Biard represented indigenous individuals and groups in ethnographic portraits and in images of episodes of conflict. I discuss how the interactions of European individuals with men and women of color, who since the colonial period had been labeled with different names to indicate degrees of racial mixture, laid the foundation for the construction of the various stereotypes of Native Brazilians. I argue that through its constant emphasis on episodes of conflict and cooperation between Biard and populations of color, Deux années au Brésil contributed to the construction of an original and modern image of Brazilian Natives. No longer either idealized or perceived as mere savage cannibals, the Natives are instead portrayed as corrupted by civilization and modernity. This chapter ultimately argues that these renderings are in dialogue with other nineteenth-century artistic and literary perspectives on “exotic” populations, like Orientalism. Along with the representations of black populations and the jungle, these stereotypical images greatly contribute to the construction of tropical romanticism.

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Stealing Heads

Most European artists, scientists, and explorers who traveled to Brazil in the nineteenth century described Native populations in words and images. Yet their relations with their Native subjects varied immensely. Debret and Rugendas, for example, had sporadic and aleatory contacts with Brazilian Natives, who were often brought to the city by other travelers. Moreover, their representations of artifacts, clothing, and other elements of material culture were based not on direct observation but rather on information obtained from the collections of the Royal Museum of Natural History at São Cristóvão Palace and from European travelogues.1 Unlike Rugendas and Debret, Biard spent several months living among several indigenous groups in the provinces of Espírito Santo, Pará, and Amazonas. Consequently, his portrayals of these groups were not idealized representations but instead were greatly influenced by the fact that he lived in proximity with them.2 Few European artists represented Brazilian Native populations in oil paintings. One of the few exceptions is the American painter George Catlin (1796–1872), who extensively portrayed Native Americans in the United States. From 1830 to 1838 he participated in various expeditions along the Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Red Rivers as well as in the Great Lakes region and in Florida. During these expeditions Catlin collected numerous artifacts and produced hundreds of paintings of Native groups, which filled his Indian gallery.3 Catlin’s work may have piqued Biard’s interest in Native populations. Although no evidence directly connects the two artists, the French painter certainly knew of Catlin’s work and probably met the American artist. In 1840, after touring several U.S. cities, Catlin exhibited his Indian gallery in London.4 In June 1845 the gallery came to the Louvre Museum in Paris. In addition to exhibiting paintings and drawings, the gallery also included live depictions, first with locally hired actors and later with several Iowa and Ojibwa Natives, who enacted hunts, dances, and scalpings.5 Members of Biard’s social circle, including George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Baudelaire, saw and praised Catlin’s work. The American painter also impressed Biard’s benefactor, King Louis-Philippe, who commissioned Catlin to copy fifteen of the artworks in his Indian gallery. In addition, between 1852 and 1857 Catlin traveled in Central and South America, including northern Brazil and the Amazonia.6 These travels are

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sparsely documented, but evidence shows that Catlin, like Biard a few years later, visited such places as Óbidos, Santarém, and Belém in Pará and depicted the Mura, the Xingu, the Botocudo, and the Mawe.7 However, Catlin’s book on his South American travels was not published until 1867, five years after Deux années au Brésil.8 On his arrival in Brazil Biard clearly expressed his desire to meet and paint “savage” Natives. His original goal in traveling to Espírito Santo and the Amazonia was to execute oil paintings, but because of the challenges of the weather and insects he mainly drew sketches and took photographs, which provided him with source material for oil paintings on his return to Paris. None of these paintings were ethnographic portraits, however. Despite being very popular in various kinds of publications, including travelogues and travel magazines, ethnographic subjects were rarely depicted in oil paintings. History and landscape were the dominant subject categories in nineteenth-century oil painting, which was considered a higher art form than drawing or engraving. Biard went to Brazil in 1858, several years after Debret and Rugendas. By this time the Native populations of cities like Rio de Janeiro were very much reduced, as the painter soon realized: “Many times I asked the longtime French residents in Brazil where one should go to find the Indians, and I received no satisfactory answer. According to most of these gentlemen, the Indians were almost nonexistent, were a lost race. Yet it seemed to me that some of them might remain somewhere.”9 The painter’s interest in Native populations is apparent in his near obsession with collecting all kinds of indigenous artifacts. French anthropology was in its early stages as a discipline, and photography was rarely employed in fieldwork at that time. Instead, drawing was the medium favored by European travelers and naturalists for documenting Brazilian inhabitants and wildlife.10 In the second half of the nineteenth century, when European cities were developing quickly, the depiction of virgin forests and Native inhabitants, especially those perceived as untouched by white civilization, was not only part of a long tradition but also a form of nostalgia, characteristic of European romanticism’s reaction to the emergence of modernity.11 As natural history evolved into ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology, the idea that indigenous populations were in danger and destined to disappear through contact with white civilization also motivated the quest.

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Biard met and portrayed Brazilian Natives for the first time during his sojourn in the province of Espírito Santo, when he was the guest of the Italian businessman Mr. X. The first indigenous models were what he calls his dependents—Biard refers to these Natives as commodities belonging to his host, who lent him his Indians. Moreover, the painter notices that “it is customary in the province of Espírito Santo to take them young; when they are still submitted to the province’s administration, they are like foundlings. The masters are committed to raising them, and they must keep them until a certain age, not as slaves but as servants.”12 Hence these Natives lived among white settlers, including the European immigrants who were arriving in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Natives’ position in Brazilian society varied from province to province and was often close to enslavement.13 Though not legally enslaved, they were wageless workers, and their masters provided only limited food and sleeping quarters. Native workers often shared domestic space with freeborn, freed, and enslaved black individuals. In settlements where Natives were subject to the authority of whites, they were subordinate, landless, and in the process of acculturation. In addition, with the termination of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil, Native labor was in high demand in various regions. In the Amazonia, for instance, purchasing Native children was not uncommon in the mid-nineteenth century.14 This complex context is visible in Biard’s descriptions of Brazilian Native populations in Deux années au Brésil. The social and legal status of the Natives he met in Espírito Santo and the Amazonia is often undefined. Under these conditions the painter had difficulty finding Natives who were willing to model for him. Natives who agreed to pose had to receive permission from his Italian host, who could either request or prohibit their compliance. Biard explains that his host immediately objected: “The Indians are superstitious and would not want to pose; and in what concerned him, he thought it was difficult to approach them.”15 Despite the attitude of his Italian host, Biard took it for granted that the Natives would eventually agree to become his models, even though he did not offer them any payment. When the painter finally left the Italian’s house, some “civilized” Natives agreed to pose for him in exchange for cachaça and trinkets. From that time on he established a relationship of domination with the Natives by using his resources to obtain their collaboration in his sketching endeavors.

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However, cachaça was not always sufficient to buy the Natives. During Biard’s expedition in the Amazonia he encountered several challenges in convincing indigenous men and women to pose for him. He apparently persuaded several “savage” Natives to pose for him, but soon they changed their minds. In one case “a young Arara, quite willing to be my model, disappeared when I had prepared my palette; we looked around, [and] he was gone.”16 This kind of misadventure, repeated several times, adds some suspense to the narrative. Like Biard, the reader is not privy to the motivations that led the Natives to decline to pose for him. Biard notes, “But when I wanted to execute my plan, my models fled into the forest, and I saw in each figure an air of mistrust which eventually awakened mine.”17 During a stop on the banks of the Madeira River Biard tried to buy food from a group of Mundurucu, a people whose language belongs to the TupiGuarani family and who live in various regions of Pará and Amazonas. The painter showed them one of his sketches of a Mundurucu man, but their reaction was incomprehensible to him: “You should have seen the gestures of these good people; they looked behind the paper, they touched it, repeating a word I did not understand. Women and girls dared not approach, and when I came near, they fled.”18 Nonetheless, this failure did not deter Biard from going further in forcing dialogue with the Natives. Displaying a typical colonialist attitude, he hung the Mundurucu portrait on a tree trunk and offered necklaces and tobacco to the various Mundurucu men and women who viewed it. Eventually he persuaded an elderly man to pose for him. Still, at some point Biard understood that his Murá guide was plotting to discourage the Natives from being depicted in images: “Polycarpe told him [the old Mundurucu man] that in the country of whites, there were probably a lot of people without heads, and I was probably responsible for getting as many heads as possible.” As a result of this intrigue “the unwary victim who, for some tobacco or necklaces, might agree to my request could expect to see his head leave on the first day, to join the body for which it was intended.”19 Indeed, Biard was not the first artist to report that Amerindian populations feared having their images reproduced through drawing, painting, or photography. About two decades earlier, before the invention of photography, Catlin witnessed various reactions from the Native communities he painted in the United States. In the early 1830s, when he was among the Mandan people in present-day North Dakota, he commented that the “art of

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portrait-painting was a subject entirely new to them and, of course, unthought of.”20 After he finished the portraits of two main Mandan chiefs, their reactions were mixed. Because he was able to reproduce the chiefs’ images on paper, he was acknowledged as a “great white medicine man.”21 But gradually, as more Natives saw the two paintings and recognized their chiefs, their admiration was transformed into the fear of having a portion of their souls stolen through the portraiture process, as Catlin explains: “The squaws generally agreed that they had discovered life enough in them to render my medicine too great for the Mandans; saying that such an operation could not be performed without taking away from the original something of his existence, which I put in the picture, and they could see it move, could see it stir.” As they disapproved of what they considered the experience of removing life from one body to create life in another body, “they commenced a mournful and doleful chaunt against me, crying and weeping bitterly through the village, proclaiming me a most ‘dangerous man; one who could make living persons by looking at them.’” According to these Natives, bad luck would happen to those painted by Catlin: because he was taking part of their existence to carry it with him among the white people, “when they [the Natives] died, they would never sleep quietly in their graves.”22 Unlike Catlin, Biard did not associate the Mundurucu’s attitudes with their perception of a relationship between the mimetic image and their own bodies and souls.23 Instead he understood the Natives’ reluctance as the result of a plot orchestrated by Polycarpe, never asking himself whether his guide actually believed his own story of stolen heads. As Maria Helena P. T. Machado explains, when scientists Louis and Elizabeth Agassiz visited the Amazonia in 1865, they observed the same kind of resistance from the Natives, who believed that photography would steal their souls.24 Indeed, during the nineteenth century Amazonian Natives had little contact with white individuals who were using photographic equipment or drawing detailed portraits, so their fear was not unfounded. The introduction of painting and photography as mediating instruments in settings like the Amazonia often generated controversial relations between the artist-­ ethnographer and the Natives by transforming each image into an object of negotiation. However, even though Native models might initially have felt uncomfortable posing for a sketch, painting, or photograph, they gradually learned to use this as a form of currency with which to obtain other benefits.

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These conflicts are still present for anthropologists, journalists, filmmakers, and tourists who take pictures of indigenous populations. Refusing to pose can alternatively be interpreted as a form of resistance in a context where Native populations were seeing their children, their land, and their culture being appropriated and destroyed by whites. Regardless of why Amazonian Natives refused to pose, Biard probably had more insight into their motivation than he lets the reader know. But instead of explaining it, he seemed to prefer to add suspense to his travelogue by casting Polycarpe in the role of antagonist in the narrative, making him responsible for all the artist’s misfortunes and giving a comical tone to the various episodes of conflict. For example, the woodcut Un nouveau tour de M. Polycarpe (A New Round by Mr. Polycarpe) humorously illustrates how the Natives refused to serve as Biard’s models (see figure 5.1). In the right foreground of the composition, the painter is depicted from the side, sitting at his easel, working on a sketch in the middle of the vegetation. A bare-chested Native closely observes the painter. Next to him stands another Native, probably the infamous Polycarpe, who seems to be smiling. The third Native, depicted in caricature with very long arms, is fleeing while also looking in Biard’s direction. The image clearly represents the moment that the painter observes his model escaping Figure 5.1.  Un nouveau tour de M. Polycarpe (A New Round by Mr. Polycarpe), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and Alfred Etherington, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 568.

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Figure 5.2.  M. Biard photographiant (Mr. Biard Photographing), unsigned woodcut, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 569.

from him. Immobile, Biard is in the shadow, whereas the movement of the runaway model is highlighted in the illuminated zone of the composition. The same kind of episode is portrayed in M. Biard photographiant (Mr. Biard Photographing) (see figure 5.2). The small woodcut represents the painter attempting to take a picture of Native models during his Amazon expedition. This humorous image shows the lower half of a whitetrousered Biard under the dark cloth of a camera. The painter’s hat on the ground just behind him hints at the photographer’s identity. Four caricatured Natives are posing for him, but one is moving and another one is on his knees with his hands clasped, as if begging for mercy. In the engraving, the camera, a symbol of modernity, reinforces the power relations between Europeans and Amerindians by operating as a weapon that Biard points in the direction of the models. Portraying “Civilized” Natives

Biard usually employs the word Indian to designate the first models he painted during his sojourn in the forests of Espírito Santo. Nevertheless, he also uses several other terms, like mulattress, mulatto, Negro, Negress, and mameluca, suggesting his concern with identifying the various degrees of racial mixing in Brazilian society.25 The painter’s interest in the various races in Brazilian society is also visible in the 1865 sale catalog of his studio. The “Mixed Races” subsection in the “Studies from Life” section lists several portraits of individuals who are described with the following nomenclature: “young mameluca,” “offspring of a white and a Tapuia,” “young cafuzo man,”

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“offspring of mameluco parents,” “young cafuzo man,” “offspring of a mameluca and a Tapuia,” “young woman, offspring of a mameluca and a cafuzo,” “mulattress,” “offspring of a mameluco and a mulattress,” and “mulattress, offspring of a Tapuia and a Negress.”26 Biard was willing to do anything to achieve his goal of increasing his collection of Brazilian human types. Alive or dead, an Amerindian was a subject that the painter could not pass up, even if he had to disrespect common customs and disregard the particular conditions of his potential models. The woodcut L’indien Almeida mort et la vieille femme Rose sa mère (The Indian Almeida Dead and the Old Woman, Rose, His Mother) depicts a deceased Native man with his mother (see figure 5.3). The Native man in this woodcut is also one of the men shown in the figure 4.9 woodcut, Le souroucoucou. The painter notes that the sketch that inspired the engraving was taken from life, a fact confirmed by a list of drawings in the catalog of his estate sale.27 One day, he explains, a Native who was seriously ill was brought in a hammock to his hut along with another man who was almost dead. Biard identifies the latter man as Almeida, the Native man who had killed the

Figure 5.3.  L’indien Almeida mort et la vieille femme Rose sa mère (The Indian Almeida Dead and the Old Woman, Rose, his Mother), unsigned woodcut, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 227.

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serpent and helped to drag it. Biard writes, “Two days later he was dead. I learned when I woke up that his parents were informed and would come soon to remove the body. As I was not able to paint Indians from life, I decided to take advantage of the sad circumstances that allowed me to paint a dead one.”28 The woodcut shows Almeida on his deathbed. The image represents an interior scene that can be associated with two different artistic traditions. On the one hand, the theme of mourning among Brazilian Natives harks back to sixteenth-century travelogues, including Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dit Amérique by Jean de Léry, who extensively describes the funerary ceremonies of the Tupinambá. On the other hand, the scene evokes the theme of the deathbed, which was explored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in neoclassical and romantic painting. One of these paintings is La douleur et les regrets d’Andromaque sur le corps d’Hector son mari (Sorrow and Regret of Andromaque over the Body of Hector, Her Husband) by the French painter Jacques-Louis David. Re-creating a scene from Greek mythology, the painting represents the death of Hector, the Trojan prince and warrior who became one of the most important heroes of the Trojan War and whose story is narrated in Homer’s The Iliad.29 In Biard’s work, however, this theme so dear to European romanticism is tropicalized. The protagonist is no longer a Trojan hero but instead a Brazilian Native, and Andromaque, the loyal mourning wife, is replaced with a Native woman, the protagonist’s mother. Although Biard probably did not intend to denounce the living and working conditions of Native Brazilians, his representation of the deathbed certainly points to the Natives’ lengthy and sustained extermination. The painter describes the funeral vigil by explaining that the deceased Native was lying on an old mat. His hands were pressed together and lying on his chest, and he was wrapped in an old blue shirt, with his legs naked. Biard writes, “Close to the deceased was his mother, the elderly Rose. She softly hummed a death song, swatting flies from her son’s face, opening his eyes at intervals, and occasionally also interrupting her monotonous and slow song to bite into a fish she brought from the kitchen.”30 The image shows in detail the interior of the hut. The deceased Native and his mother are immersed in shadow, represented with a network of lines, giving the scene an ambiance of sadness and extreme poverty. At the same

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time, the low lateral source of light adds a theatrical and dramatic atmosphere to the scene. The draping of the deceased man’s and his mother’s clothing, highlighted by a play of shadow and light, gives a classical aura to the representation of the mortuary scene. The mud-and-wattle walls of the hut and the straw mat, as well as the vegetation visible through the window, mark the scene’s tropicality. Unlike this idealized image of the deceased Almeida, several other woodcuts adhere to the emerging ethnographic tradition, which sought to accurately represent the heads of indigenous peoples from all possible angles. These portraits highlight the Natives’ skull shapes as well as the forms of their eyes, noses, mouths, and jaws. The highly documentary nature of these portraits, emphasizing morphological characteristics, can be attributed to the fact that the painter was able to carefully observe the models during his sojourn in Espírito Santo. Yet this descriptive concern appears in other portraits to highlight the corruption of the Brazilian Native populations. In the portraits La buveuse de cachasse (The Cachaça Drinker) and Mari de la buveuse de cachasse (Husband of the Cachaça Drinker), the models have slanted eyes, and their noses and mouths are carefully drawn (see figures 5.4 and 5.5). By characterizing the female model as a “cachaça drinker,” Biard adds an element that is not evident from the illustration itself and that can be understood only by reading the text. The painter suggests that his Native models drank alcohol excessively. Moreover, he clearly indicates that his ethnographic inquiry was seriously compromised by acknowledging that he bought his Native models with alcohol. Consequently, Biard not only contributed to corrupting these individuals through his actions, but his sketches, later transformed into woodcuts with derogatory titles, labeled them as belonging to the degenerate portion of the Amerindian population. The text that accompanies these two woodcuts explains that the modeling sessions at which the Natives drank a lot of cachaça did not always go well. Biard satirizes these events with his usual sense of humor by explaining that he had a few protected Natives who had not posed for him and for whom he kept some glasses of cachaça hidden from the others. The painter adds that he had warned the Natives not to touch his bottles, spreading the rumor that they contained very violent poisons. Likewise, the Natives saw his fingers blackened by silver nitrate, which confirmed that the liquids he used were dangerous.

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Figure 5.4.  La buveuse de cachasse

(The Cachaça Drinker), unsigned woodcut, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 254.

Nevertheless, one day one of them took advantage of his absence to steal and drink an entire bottle. Biard writes, “After a moment she began to howl and roll on the floor with horrible contortions. Amidst all the noise I understood her to say she was poisoned, she had drunk my drugs. . . . The empty bottle left me in no doubt about the condition of the patient, as well as that of her husband, who started mixing his cries with hers.” Despite the scene, the painter was not moved at all, and he found himself “forced to oust them a little abruptly” from his home.31 Biard portrays his models as Natives who drank so much alcohol that they mistakenly stole his bottles of silver nitrate that were used for photography. Moreover, the joking tone of his comments about the incident confirms that his relations with these Natives were merely utilitarian. Not only did he recruit the Native models by giving them alcohol as payment, he also did not care about their fate after they apparently drank a potentially harmful substance. This same kind of derogatory image is visible in portraits rendering Native and mixed-race women. Among his models was a young woman of color named Phylis with light wavy hair and a round face. Biard notes her beauty and reaffirms his commitment to collecting portraits of various socalled exotic human types: “I had already made portraits of several Native women and mulattresses, who were an integral part of the furniture of the

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Figure 5.5.  Mari de la buveuse de

cachasse (The Husband of the Cachaça Drinker), woodcut signed by Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 255.

house where I lived. I had a sort of predilection for a good and beautiful Indian girl with big cheeks and smiling mouth; she was named Phylis.”32 His statement that the domestic servants who modeled for him were like furniture confirms his adherence to the prevailing slave mentality in which women of color had the status of commodities. Phylis is represented in the engraving La grosse Phylis avec les tortues (Big Phylis with the Turtles), which corresponds to the period of Biard’s stay in the environs of the city of Manaus (see figure 5.6). This caricatural portrait shows Phylis standing barefoot and wearing a dress. She is laughing, but her facial features are not well defined. At her feet are a hatchet and a turtle lying on its back, bleeding. The painter explains that he frequently heard bursts of laughter from his window but did not usually pay attention to the activities of the slaves of the house in which he lived. According to him their “work was always accompanied by gossip and comment; if a Negress was, as usual, carrying a pot, a bowl, or an umbrella on her head, it was a pretext for conversation.”33 But that day the laughter was so loud that he decided to look through the window to see what was going on. Biard then narrates the episode that disillusioned him about his favorite young female Native: “From that day on, and as soon as I looked out at the street, she disgusted me. My protégé was armed with a hatchet, [her sleeves] rolled up to the elbow. Her ruffled pink dress was covered with blood. She

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Figure 5.6.  La grosse Phylis

avec les tortues (The Big Phylis with the Turtles), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and Laly (brothers Pierre-JosephMarie and Charles Eugène), in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 461.

was trying to detach the front plate of the carapace of a turtle with hatchet blows.” He adds that another one of his models, who according to him was a “girl half Indian and half Negro, was playing with her mother to see who would take the victim’s head and as the poor animal was very large and strong, it slipped between their fingers. . . . I saw them drive a wooden spindle into the spine of the unfortunate beast. It became immobile at that moment, and they could dissect it at leisure.”34 After this operation the women removed the shell from the turtle’s back, then uncovered the stomach and removed the eggs. Although during his sojourn in the forests of Espírito Santo and the Amazonia Biard felt free to kill all kinds of animals and be proud of his hunting prowess, he seemed to believe that women of color should not have the same privilege, for he states that after that day he no longer allowed Phylis and her assistants to enter his hut.35 Notwithstanding the humorous narrative, the image of Phylis killing the turtle reinforces the idea conveyed along Biard’s travel narrative that Native and black women are unreliable and their behavior is uncivilized. The same kind of representation is conveyed in the portrait Mundurucu

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civilisé (Civilized Mundurucu) (see figure 5.7). This woodcut was probably inspired by a real-life sketch listed in the sale catalog of Biard’s studio with the title Jeune garçon presume anthropophage (Young Boy Presumed Cannibal).36 Biard met the Native boy portrayed in Mundurucu civilisé in the region of the present-day city of Maués. Located in the province of Amazonas, about 160 miles from Manaus between the Madeira and Tapajós Rivers, Maués was inhabited mostly by the Mawe and the Mundurucu, which lets us assume that the young boy belonged to one of these two groups. The boy’s portrait is idealized. His body is well proportioned and strong, and the features of his round face are harmonious. In the text that accompanies the engraving Biard explains his preference for “savage” individuals over those in contact with white civilization. He seems to have forgotten that as a European man who fully belongs to the white society that dominates the Natives, he contributes to corrupting indigenous men and women by paying for their services with alcohol. After complaining about the Natives who did not fulfill their responsibilities, the painter declares his affinity for a boy who waited on him at his table and whose portrait he executed.37 According to Biard the boy was a cannibal. Regardless of the lack of any

Figure 5.7.  Mundurucu

civilisé (Civilized Mundurucu), woodcut signed by François-Auguste Biard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 611.

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evidence that the young boy ever ate human flesh, Biard believed—or simulated the belief to enhance his narrative—an unlikely story he was told, probably by someone with the intention of impressing him. One day the little boy, who had been in the house for a few days, disappeared without anyone being able to guess where he was hidden. Biard writes, “On searching around, they [the searchers] saw some smoke coming through the cracks of a shed at the far end of a courtyard, and they arrived in time to prevent the young innocent from knifing a little girl of two or three years old, whom he was preparing to grill, unaware of the atrocity of his actions.”38 The painter explains that now the boy no longer ate human flesh, but he still practiced geophagy, the habit of eating dirt. It is not clear from the text why Biard associated anthropophagy (cannibalism) with geophagy. Indeed, the practice of eating dirt was not uncommon among South American Natives and had also been identified among the enslaved populations in Brazil. Travelers like Humboldt, who recorded the practice in the Amazonia during the early nineteenth century, associated it with hunger, even though recent studies question this hypothesis.39 The woodcut Indienne anthropophage (Female Indian Cannibal) also depicts an alleged cannibal (see figure 5.8). The engraving is probably based on a sketch titled Jeune fille présumée anthropophage (Young Woman Presumed to Be a Cannibal), which is listed in the estate sale catalog for Biard’s studio.40 Except for the title, nothing in this portrait evokes cannibalism. Nevertheless, Biard claims that although the young Native woman no longer ate human flesh, her gaze still retained a savage element: “There was nothing to indicate her old [cannibalistic] habits, and she was very gentle, despite her big savage eyes, whose pupils were so small that they seemed almost white, when they were not injected with red.”41 As in the previous passage about the young boy, Biard removes the ritualistic dimension of cannibalism and pre­ sents it merely as a food preference. The two engravings that purportedly depict cannibals again relate Deux années au Brésil to the sixteenth-century European tradition of travel accounts in Brazil, which often described episodes of anthropophagy by the Tupinambá. Jean de Léry and Hans Staden, for example, despite their prejudices accurately described cannibalism as occurring in the context of warfare. Unlike them, by associating anthropophagy with a dietary preference, Biard obliterates the symbolic dimension of the practice, in which “captives

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Figure 5.8.  Indienne anthro-

pophage (Female Indian Cannibal), woodcut signed by Jean-François-Auguste Trichon, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 612.

. . . as befits sacrificial victims, were the means of communication between the living and the dead.”42 Even though many of the individuals Biard identified as Indians were probably of mixed race, only one woodcut depicts a woman who is identified as a mulatta. The portrait La mulâtresse (The Mulatta) is based on a drawing Biard completed while in Manaus (see figure 5.9). The image emphasizes the model’s beauty and delicate physiognomy. Dark skinned and curly haired, she is naked above the waist and is looking provocatively at the viewer. To differentiate the model from a Native or an enslaved woman, Biard identifies her as a mulatta; this technically means a woman of mixed white and black ancestry, but in Brazil the term was also employed to differentiate the status of a freeborn or freed black person from an enslaved one. Her barebreasted portrait is certainly not realistic, since even the Natives living close to Manaus wore clothing; rather, it is part of a staged scene intended to convey exoticism. This suggests that the painter developed a more intimate relationship than usual with this particular model. Whereas the engraving accentuates the beauty of the mixed-race woman, the text describes her as vivacious and and as having a lack of integrity. It also clarifies that the model is the woman who helped to remove some thorns that

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Figure 5.9.  La mulâtresse

(The Mulatta), unsigned woodcut, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 348.

pierced the bottom of Biard’s feet during a walk. But despite the help she provided, and even though Biard emphasizes how skillful she was, he accuses her of being a robber and says that because of this vice he saw her “being whipped while the other women of color, not as pretty as her, applauded.” According to him “she was probably used to this kind of situation and it did not affect her very much. Two hours later she came to my room to pose, with all her talents and with flowers in her hair.”43 Biard portrays the mulatta as a beautiful woman by hinting at her sensuality, but he also presents her as a thief and a shameless woman. Once her whipping was over, she was allegedly ready to adorn herself and stand halfnaked to pose for the painter. Indeed, similar representations that emphasize and praise the sensuality of Brazilian-born black women and mulattas were widely disseminated in the nineteenth century, therefore contributing to the idea of “tropical degeneration,” a notion typical of tropical romanticism and also visible in later travelogues.44 Based on these travel accounts, scholars like Gilberto Freyre have helped to popularize the image of the libidinous mulatta “who initiated us into physical love and transmitted to us . . . the first complete feeling of being a

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man.”45 In his book Casa-grande e senzala, Freyre maintains that during the colonial period white Brazilian men developed what he calls a genuine “obsession” for black women who lived in the household and were sexually available. Omitting any mention of violence or other forms of coercion in the relations between male masters and female slaves, the Brazilian sociologist casts the men as always surrounded by “easy mulatto women” and able to achieve orgasm only with black or partly black women.46 Humorous Portraits

Biard’s negative portrayals of Brazilian Natives as lazy, lying, and degenerate are more accentuated than the descriptions in previous travel accounts, yet they are still in dialogue with the long travel-writing tradition in Brazil. For example, La Condamine states that “all or most of the Indians of South America are liars, credulous, and obstinate with the marvelous.”47 Biard reproduces La Condamine’s stereotyped vision of Brazilian Natives, even though his humor mitigates and nuances the negative representations conveyed in the portraits. Probably executed from memory, these amusing portraits of Brazilian Natives appear in the second half of his travelogue, which covers his sojourn in the Amazonia. After experiencing several problems with his Native guides, Biard welcomed with relief the arrival of a new Native domestic servant named Miguel. He is depicted as an obedient and ridiculous character whose kindness contrasts with Polycarpe’s evil. But soon, however, the painter’s initial positive impression changes to mistrust. In the text contrasting Polycarpe and Miguel he expresses his fear of the negative influence of the former on the latter, whose greed also raised the painter’s suspicions. Stating that he wanted to prevent any friendship between the two, Biard quickly explains he was not satisfied with Miguel’s behavior. He notes that “before embarking, I told him what he would earn, but once I could no longer turn back, he asked me for more, which I gave him. But after this first attempt, I came to expect the worst from him whenever the opportunity arose.”48 Although Polycarpe is portrayed as evil and in the narrative he plays the role of Biard’s antagonist, his sole individual portrait is rather an amusing caricature. In Portrait et tic de Polycarpe (Polycarpe’s Portrait and Twitch), the Murá guide’s physical traits are exaggerated: his feet are huge, and his

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Figure 5.10.  Portrait et tic de

Polycarpe (Polycarpe’s Portrait and Twitch), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and François-Auguste Biard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 358.

arms, neck, and legs are slightly bent and disproportionately long (see figure 5.10). Moreover, his head, seen in profile, juts forward, and his lips and chin are clearly oversized. The ridiculous figure represented in the engraving is not consistent with Biard’s written description of his first meeting with Polycarpe, whom he compares to Mephistopheles: “He was strong. I took a step back, I had in front of me Mephistopheles in person. Goethe and Schiller had prefigured Polycarpe. His name was Polycarpe. This name, which removed from my thoughts any diabolical idea, reassured me.”49 But just after this first meeting, Biard narrates several anecdotes to illustrate Polycarpe’s alleged laziness and disobedience, suggesting the further tensions that would emerge between them.

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On a certain occasion, Manaus’s judge questioned why the painter accused Polycarpe of being lazy, since the judge had seen the guide carrying a basket full of provisions. Surprised, Biard states that this behavior was not typical of Polycarpe: “I was afraid he was ill, but on returning home, I found him, as always, in a deep sleep. I inspected his work. Having bought a supply of cotton needed to prepare the bird specimens, I assigned him to separate the stuffing from the seeds. He completed a quarter of this task in a fortnight, and in two hours I did the rest.”50 These various humorous passages are meant to contrast the lazy and secretive Native to the smart and energetic painter. Biard gradually becomes more assertive in expressing his mistrust of Polycarpe, calling him a wretch: “I received a lovely parakeet as a gift, she was very gentle; this little beast followed me everywhere. Once on board I wanted to accommodate her, but the infamous Polycarpe had decided to neglect her in my home. She must have starved. I added this complaint to others, and my hatred for this wretch increased.”51 The tension and mystery increase throughout the narrative so much that the painter believes he is the victim of a plot. Despite his numerous complaints, however, not for a moment does Biard consider dismissing his guide. On the contrary, he seems instead to adopt the reigning mentality of Brazilian slave society about domestic workers of color. In his role as master, the painter develops a somewhat sadistic relationship with his guides by taking pleasure in complaining about them and finding all their faults. A similar vision is also present in the engraving Rameurs sauvages et stupides (Savage and Stupid Paddlers), which portrays three paddlers who were ordered by a provincial authority to accompany the artist to Vila Bela toward the end of his journey on the Amazon River (see figure 5.11). Reinforcing the derogatory title of the image, the men appear deformed and caricatured. The text also refers to the three Natives as stupid: “My new servants had an air of gentleness that suited me much better; it was a father, a son, and probably a relative. I was hoping I would not have to complain about them. . . . They were, it is true, very stupid, but what difference did their appearance make, if they handled the paddle well?”52 Indeed, the illustration and the text confirm that Biard associated the traits of obedience and sweetness with stupidity. Yet the painter probably understood by this time that as in any

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Figure 5.11.  Rameurs sau-

vages et stupides (Savage and Stupid Paddlers), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 613.

slave society, his guides’ apparent laziness was actually a form of resistance to excessive abuse by the white masters. Ethnographic Portraits of the “Savages”

Like several nineteenth-century European travelers—including Spix, Martius, Rugendas, Debret, and Wetherell—Biard narrated an encounter with a Botocudo man during his sojourn in Espírito Santo, and he represented this in a very small portrait entitled Un botocudos (A Botocudo) (see figure 5.12). Biard explains that he met the Native by chance: “What was my astonishment when, poking my head through the door, I saw instead of a hunter with his gun, as happened sometimes, a dozen Botocudo savages spreading their deformed lips and their long ears half a foot in length.”53 In the passage referring to the woodcut, the painter clarifies why the group was close to his home: “These Botocudo were returning from Victoria, where they had an appointment with the president of the captaincy. They entered the city naked and were quickly offered shirts and trousers, guns, powder, and lead. To these gifts were added fine words and beautiful promises, which would be forgotten, and they were dismissed.”54

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Figure 5.12.  Un botocudos (A Botocudo), woodcut signed by C. M. (monogram of Charles Maurand), in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 244.

This passage is clearly based on a passage in Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil in which Debret explains his own lithograph of the Botocudo. In 1816 Debret saw in Rio de Janeiro “a family of civilized Botocudo, brought from the banks of the Belmonte River by the commander Cardoso da Rosa, to be introduced to the Prince Regent Dom João VI. . . . When they were presented to the court, for more decency, a vest and blue pants were added to the chief’s costume.” Debret also notes that the Natives “were dressed in a shirt and trousers of white cotton. . . . Shortly after leaving the Palace of SaintChristophe, they were pressed to take off the clothes lent to them, to enjoy the freedom of remaining naked, according to their custom. Then they returned to their villages, happy to bring the iron axes they were offered as gifts.”55 Whereas Debret emphasized the Botocudos’ satisfaction after their meeting with representatives of the Portuguese royal family, more than three decades later Biard went further, criticizing the Brazilian provincial authorities who made promises to the Natives with no intention of fulfilling them. Never­ theless, in order to prove the authenticity of his narrative, the painter states that he exchanged several objects with one Botocudo. Like other travelers, he uses analogy to explain how the Native ate despite his lips being pierced with a botoque the size of a five-franc coin. He comments that he offered a knife and a nail file he brought from Paris to the Botocudo man who seemed to be the leader of the group. In exchange Biard received a bow and three arrows.

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Biard also gave part of his lunch to the Native. When the Botocudo man started eating, Biard saw how “he, like his companions, had inserted in his lower lip a hard cactus disk, a little larger than a five-franc coin, which he used as a plate. Cutting a piece of smoked meat with my knife, he had then only to slide it into his mouth. This way of using the lip as a dish seemed to be a great convenience.” Biard then notes that his new acquaintances “also had large pieces of wood of the same size inserted in their earlobes. Without this precaution they would have hung down half a foot.”56 Although the similarity to Debret’s text could call into question the veracity of Biard’s account, this encounter with Botocudo Natives is confirmed in the estate sale catalog of the painter’s studio, which lists not only the bow and three arrows mentioned in the text but also four real-life sketches of Botocudo individuals.57 Thus, the illustration and the text combine elements to convince the reader of the veracity of Biard’s visual inventory of Brazilian Natives. During his Amazon River expedition, the painter continued collecting portraits of Native groups, particularly the Mundurucu and the Arara. Biard observes that he “knew that the Mundurucu painted their faces with a greenish blue. They traced a line from one ear, passing under the nose to join the other [ear].”58 For example, the woodcut Femme mundurucue (Mundurucu Woman) shows a naked Mundurucu woman who is covered with body paint and tattoos (see figure 5.13). Her small pendulous breasts are neither idealized nor caricatured but are realistically represented. Biard’s depictions of tattooed Mundurucu bodies perfectly correspond with previous representations of this group, especially the watercolors executed by Hercule Florence in 1828, when he participated in the Langsdorff expedition to the Amazonia. According to Florence, the Mundurucu “blacken their faces in different ways, with ‘jenipapo,’ whose juice gives a color resembling writing ink. They make tattoos on the face, shoulders, neck, and chest. . . . Sometimes they still make vertical lines on some parts of the body.” Florence’s watercolors also depict Mundurucu men’s shaved hair. He explains that the “Mundurucu . . . have a custom of shaving their hair, leaving a short, round tuft above the forehead, and leaving the hair to grow on the back of the head.”59 This element is absent from Biard’s text and woodcuts, probably because the practice had already been abandoned by the time he met these groups in the Amazonia.60

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Figure 5.13.  Femme mundurucue (Munduruc Woman), woodcut signed by François-Auguste Biard and John Quartley, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 547.

Because French expatriates living in Brazil were closely connected, it is not impossible that Florence might have met Biard in Rio de Janeiro, where the former used to go to purchase photography and drawing supplies.61 Biard may have seen Florence’s watercolors, even if several of them were sent to Russia and others remained in Florence’s private collection in Brazil. Regardless of these possible connections, the illustrations of Mundurucu individuals in Deux années au Brésil were certainly based on sketches from life. Several passages in the book refer to interactions with the Mundurucu, and the sale catalog of Biard’s studio lists fifteen studies of the Mundurucu, which probably served as source material for the engravings.62 Moreover, the facial tattoos of the Mundurucu woman that are depicted by the painter perfectly correspond with later descriptions provided by anthropologists Yolanda and Robert Murphy. They reported, “The faces of the women were dominated by a broad band of blue that ran from ear to ear across the region of the mouth; the upper part of the face was left untattooed, but the lower part had a geometric design which, like those of the men,

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continued down the neck.” 63 In addition, almost a century after Biard’s sojourn in the Amazonia, Robert Murphy explained that tattooing was part of Mundurucu initiation rituals: “Complete tattooing signalized full manhood for the boys and womanhood for the females and constituted initiation as an adult member of the society.” 64 The Murphys noted that Mundurucu tattoos were characterized by geometric forms like diamonds and triangles, usually “applied by puncturing the skin with thorns dipped in genipa [jenipapo] dye.”65 Biard also portrayed the Arara people he met along the Madeira River. A portrait shows a young Arara man’s facial tattoo in detail, and the accompanying text describes it as a “crescent from the chin up to the cheeks and around the eyes.”66 Yet even more impressive is the woodcut Chef arara (Arara Chief), a full-length frontal portrait occupying an entire page, also executed from life (see figure 5.14).67 The model wears a huge headdress adorned with feathers, and other ornaments decorate his legs and arms. Biard comments that the chief had, in addition to the crescent tattooed on his face, “feathers in the nose, others planted in holes at the top of the upper lip, plus one above the chin.”68 Festivals and Rituals

During his sojourn in the forests of Espírito Santo, Biard attended a festival honoring São Benedito (Saint Benedict), a black Catholic saint who was very popular among the enslaved, freed, and freeborn black population in Brazil. The woodcut La fête de Saint Benoît dans un village indien (The Festival of Saint Benedict in an Indian Village) is set in a luxuriant forest (see figure 5.15). The individual shown in profile in the center of the composition is identified in the text as an Amerindian. He is holding an umbrella in his left hand and a portable altar to Saint Benedict in his right hand. In front of him is a black man, also shown in profile, dressed in full military uniform.69 This woodcut was based on a sketch executed from memory with the help of some Native models who posed for Biard when he returned from observing the festival.70 Because the various characters were drawn separately, then assembled in the final composition, their positions look very static and artificial.71 Biard explains that the most anticipated moment of the festival was the

Figure 5.14.  Chef arara (Arara Chief), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard” and Paul

Pierre Louis Dumont, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 549.

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Figure 5.15.  La fête de Saint Benoît dans un village indien (The Festival of Saint Bene-

dict in an Indian Village), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard,” in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 199.

arrival of the two characters depicted in the center of the image: “The first, a big Indian dressed in a white smock, resembling from afar the surplice of a choirboy, held in one hand a red umbrella decorated with yellow flowers; in his other hand was a box, partially supported by an old fringed shawl, placed like a harness. In the box was St. Benedict, who, I do not know why, is Negro.” 72 He adds that the box contained flowers and was also intended to receive offerings. When explaining the role of the second character, the painter establishes an amusing analogy between the local characters and French historical characters by producing a collage of references from different places and times: “The second character, worthy of belonging to the former army of the Emperor Soulouque, was dressed in an Indian military uniform of sky blue, with collar and piping in Indian fashion, imitating red damask. His small gold epaulettes fell behind the shoulders, like those of General Lafayette.”73 Biard’s humorous description amalgamates elements of the local Brazilian context with references to the former French colony of Saint-Domingue by comparing the black captain to Emperor Faustin I, or Faustin-Élie Soulouque (1782–1867), a formerly enslaved man who ruled Haiti from 1847 to 1849.

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Despite these satirical remarks, Biard documents the interactions of Native and black individuals who lived together and celebrated the same patron saints, combining elements of Catholic, Native, and African religions. Referring to the festival as a “grotesque party,” the painter explains that the celebration was very important to the local population, which started preparing for it six months in advance and then remembered the festivities six months afterward. Biard states that from the moment the drumming started it did not stop. The captain led the parade, followed by celebrants who were dancing “a cancan” and yelling. Moving from house to house, drinking caoueba and cachaça at each stop, the paraders eventually ended up at the local church.74 The woodcuts Prière au soleil dans les forêts de l’Amazonie (Prayer to the Sun in the Forests of the Amazon) and Fabrication du poison (Manufacture of the Poison) represent rituals performed by Amazonian Natives (see figures 5.16 and 5.17). Unlike the ethnographic portraits, these idealized representations of Natives are taken from two oil paintings based on Biard’s sketches.75 The painter did not actually observe the ceremonies depicted in the two

Figure 5.16.  Prière au soleil dans les forêts de l’Amazonie (Prayer to the Sun in the For-

ests of the Amazonia), woodcut signed by “Riou after Biard,” and Hotelin, Hurel, and Sargent, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 575.

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Figure 5.17.  Fabrication du poison (Manufacture of the Poison), woodcut signed by

Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and Alfred Etherington, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 579.

paintings and the woodcuts but rather based his depictions on secondhand information. His Mundurucu friend João reportedly told him that the Natives who lived beyond the cataracts of the Madeira River carried out their devotions “like the old Peruvians,” perhaps referring to the Natives of the Incan Empire. He evidently did not witness the preparation of the poison curare, either, since he says, “The tribe had made the supply of curare a few days earlier; I was too late. My friend João presented me with a small pot halffilled with this poison.” 76 Biard’s renderings of Brazilian Natives in oil paintings are rather idealized, in distinct contrast to the woodcuts published in Deux années au Brésil. Sylvia Rodríguez has suggested, regarding the artists’ colony of Taos, New Mexico, that consumption preferences can drive the idealization of Native images, because “no one would like, much less buy, socially naturalistic paintings on the actual conditions which prevailed in the region: racism, poverty, alcoholism, and perpetual drought.”77 Thus, it is no coincidence that the two idealized paintings that inspired the two woodcuts of the prayer to

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the sun and the preparation of curare are Biard’s best-known Brazilian works, featured in several exhibitions in Brazil and France.78 Biard did attend other rituals and ceremonies celebrated by Amazonian Natives, however, and he depicted these in three different woodcuts. Jeune homme à marier (Young Man to Marry) represents a Mundurucu initiation ceremony, even though the painter acknowledges he did not fully understand it when he observed it (see figure 5.18). The close point of view suggests an atmosphere of intimacy in the image. In the foreground, a dozen Mundurucu sit in a circle around one man. Behind them is a partial view of the village at night, with thatched huts. Some of the men in the circle are seen from behind as blackened silhouettes, but the faces and tattoos of a few others sitting on the opposite side are discernible. The ambiance created by the play of shadow and light reinforces the aura of mystery, which is also hinted at in the text: “In the evening, as I began to fall asleep, I was awakened by a discordant and continuous noise. A great light was rising in the middle of huts. Although I was sick, curiosity prevailed, and

Figure 5.18.  Jeune homme à marier (Young Man to Marry), woodcut signed by

Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and François Pierdon, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 565.

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dragging myself as I could, by supporting myself with my gun, I got to see a strange spectacle I did not understand at first.” 79 Biard joined the group to attend the ceremony. He describes the music as consisting of drums and an instrument whose sound was similar to a whistle. He explains that the Indians were sitting in a circle, in the middle of which a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old, whose face showed no emotion, was standing and was the center of attention. According to Biard there was nothing remarkable about him “except that he wore on his right arm, like a sleeve, a mitt or case made of latanier palm, which could be shortened or lengthened at will. The Indians use it to knead manioc flour.” 80 The painter explains that after half an hour, the sleeve was eventually removed and the young man’s arm was enormously swollen, because within the mitt, which he had worn for half an hour, there were many very huge ants of the most dangerous kind. The group then surrounded the young man and led him to a hut to the sound of music. Biard ends the account by observing that “when they passed close to me, I was able to see the composition of these flutes, whose sweet and melodious sound hit me. These were bones of the dead, there was no mistake. They were decorated with large beetle wings, and hung around the necks of the musicians, attached by cords.” 81 Biard mentions flutes being played during this initiation ceremony, but the engraving does not show them. In the late nineteenth century the writer and naturalist John George Wood (1827–1889) described the same ceremony of male initiation and depicted it in a woodcut called The Glove Dance, which is very similar to the illustration in Deux années au Brésil (see figure 5.19). Wood notes that “the candidate for manhood and the privilege of a warrior goes to the council-house, accompanied by his friends, who sing and beat drums to encourage him. The old men then proceed to the test.” 82 Yet the naturalist does not mention any flutes, and the only musical instrument he depicts is a tambour. Moreover, according to him the glove was made not of latanier palm but rather of bamboo: “They take two bamboo tubes, closed at one end and open at the other, and place in each tube or ‘glove’ a number of the fiercest ants of the country. Into these tubes the wretched lad thrusts his arms, and has them tied in their places, so that they cannot fall off. The drummers and singers then strike up, and the candidate joins in the song.” Wood adds that the group walked around the village

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Figure 5.19.  The Glove Dance, in John George Wood, The Natural History of Man, 576.

dancing and singing and stopping in front of every house. In order to be admitted among the older men, the young initiate could not show the least sign of suffering.83 Likewise, anthropologist Robert Murphy mentions an initiation ceremony called Duparip, described to him by one of his informants. According to the informant the ceremony “had ceased to be practiced long before his birth and . . . had been related to him as a boy by the old men.” Although fragmentary, Murphy’s description is similar to Biard’s, for he states that “flutes were played by dancers clothed in cloaks of buriti leaf, who danced from house to house, playing in each.” 84 Yet neither Wood nor Murphy refers to flutes made of human bones, although it is not impossible that Biard did see such instruments. As other travelers reported, Tupi-speaking groups fabricated various kinds of flutes, including cangoeira and membi, using human bones, especially the tibias, taken from the enemies they killed.85

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Figure 5.20.  Jeune fille nubile (Young Marriageable Woman), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou, François-Auguste Biard, and P. Dumont, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 573.

The woodcut Jeune fille nubile (Young Marriageable Woman) depicts the initiation rite of a Mundurucu young woman; Biard may be the only Westerner to have represented it (see figure 5.20). The image is of a large hut with a big cage in the middle in which a young woman is sitting. Extending from the left edge to the middle of the composition is a long line of Native men. Their physiognomy is not clear, but elaborate tattoos are discernible on their chests. The first man in line is touching the hair of the young woman while the others wait to approach her. Biard explains he was ill and did not attend this ceremony, but it was described to him by his Mundurucu friend João, who told him that “the hut whence these cries came contained in its center a cage in which a girl leaving childhood was locked and condemned according to custom to a strange torture: each member of the tribe, after coating his fingers with a kind of glue, just pulled her hair out successively, bit by bit. From that moment, she took her place among women.” 86 The Murphys corroborate Biard’s description of this ceremony to some extent, reporting that Mundurucu women played

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passive roles in ceremonies. Nevertheless, at the time of their fieldwork, there were no puberty ceremonies for Mundurucu females.87 The woodcut Musique à la lune (Music to the Moon) illustrates another Mundurucu ceremony (see figure 5.21). The image is of a group of Mundurucu men who are dancing and playing drums and trumpets in the jungle at night. The men’s bodies are mere blackened silhouettes that project their shadows on the ground. In the lower left foreground Biard is hidden in the middle of the foliage as a curious observer of the Amerindian world. The vegetation acts as a barrier for the painter, symbolizing the separation of his “civilized” world from the “savage” world of the Natives. According to Biard, who did attend the ceremony, the group “was giving a charivari” (i.e., a shivaree, a noisy mock serenade to newlyweds) to wake the moon because an eclipse had hidden it. With a stone each musician struck a large iron plate used for cooking cassava flour. Biard describes, “To achieve a good sound it had been hung from a tree. The children played with bone whistles. Others blew huge hollow megaphones that are used to call enemies to battle. The rest of the gang banged in turn on drums formed of tree trunks and covered with ox or tapir skin.” 88 In addition to sketching the ceremony from life, Biard was able to buy one of the trumpets the next day.89 Called karökö, these trumpets are sacred musical instruments about fifty inches long. The Murphys call this instrument a “phallic symbol” that is “basically a hollow tube with a reed placed in its mouth.”90 Played only by Mundurucu males, it is associated with ancestral spirits.91 Biard was probably one of the few nineteenth-century Europeans to not only attend but also describe, in both words and images, a karökö ceremony. Conflict and Cooperation

Reinforcing the opposition between civilization and savagery that characterizes tropical romanticism, several engravings in Deux années au Brésil depict scenes of conflict and cooperation between Biard and the Natives.92 The woodcut Opération désagréable (Unpleasant Operation) represents the painter’s interaction with some Natives in Espírito Santo (see figure 5.22). The scene shows a female domestic servant removing bichos-de-pé (chigoe fleas, or jiggers) from the painter’s foot. Biard describes the parasite as “a kind of tick so

Figure 5.21.  Musique à la lune (Music to the Moon), woodcut signed by François Pierdon in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 605.

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Figure 5.22.  Opération désagréable (Unpleasant Operation), woodcut signed by Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 189.

imperceptible that it slips under the toenails and sometimes in other parts of the foot” where it lays eggs that should not be left to hatch because that can cause “very serious disorders.”93 Indeed, other European travelers who sojourned in Brazil also mentioned the damages produced by bichos-de-pé. Wetherell, for instance, referred to the insect as an “exceedingly annoying little pest. It is of very small size, and penetrating the skin, generally of the feet, enlarges and becomes very painful, with an itching and burning heat, and if not immediately taken out, may produce serious consequences.”94 The visual image of the episode emphasizes Biard’s suffering during his stay in the rain forest. The two figures in the foreground are well defined, whereas the walls and objects in the background remain in obscurity. The darkness of the room contrasts with the light of a candle that accentuates the fierce insects flying around the painter. Biard’s shadow projected on the wall reinforces the humorous and simultaneously dramatic aspect of the action: “They found eleven nests in the big toe of my right foot. It is easy to understand the effect produced by these holes, into which easily slip other scourges of the same kind, which expand whenever a new bug is removed. While I was

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being dissected from below, all variety of species attracted by the candle came through my roof to exert on the rest of my person to make me almost mad.”95 The text does not mention this aspect, but the woodcut clearly marks the contrast between Biard and the female domestic servant of color. Emphasizing the hierarchy based on social status, race, and sex, the image places the French male in a position of authority in relation to the mixed-race woman. Whereas the painter is raising his arms defensively to protect himself from the insects, the servant is in a position of submission, crouching on her knees and elbows. Almost lying on the ground, in a position of total servitude, she has her face directly at the painter’s foot, attentively removing the bichos-de-pé. Another engraving, Le Revolver (The Revolver), illustrates a conflictual episode between Biard and his Native paddlers during the beginning of the painter’s expedition on the Amazon River (see figure 5.23). The woodcut is very close to a caricature, representing a scene in which the painter is the protagonist shooting toward the two Natives, who are paddling on the opposite side. Only the blackened silhouettes of the paddlers are visible. Polycarpe, who is standing behind the painter, is again represented in a caricatural manner, his body inclined forward in an attitude of curiosity. The image is clarified by the text, which explains that Biard’s paddlers and the guard who accompanied them were often drunk and arrived late. As a result the painter became afraid of being abandoned by them in the middle of the Amazonia. Despite the woodcut’s humorous component, the text suggests that the Natives who are ridiculed in the image did indeed inspire his fear. At this point Biard had been told that “nothing is more uncertain than the Indians’ promises,” reinforcing the widespread colonial idea that Natives were untrustworthy.96 One day, when just one paddler was working, the painter decided to intimidate his guides by cleaning and testing his handgun. The Natives were surprised but did not react immediately. According to Biard, however, they seemed to be scared. He writes that “the Indians, those beings so undemonstrative that we never see them laugh or cry, whose faces never show any expression, good or bad, had altogether ceased paddling, washing, and sleeping, waiting to see what I was going to do with this instrument.” Wary that Polycarpe was conspiring against him, the painter realized that he placed

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Figure 5.23.  Le revolver (The Revolver), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and Félix-Jean Gauchard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 480.

himself in a dangerous situation, and if he could not inspire affection, “which sometimes is found in the Negro but never in the Indian,” at least he could inspire fear.97 By comparing the Natives to black individuals, the text is much more revealing about Biard’s perceptions and the predominating mentality about the Brazilian Native populations. In fact, the painter knew that at least in the Amazonian region the Natives were much less submissive than black individuals. Even though living in poverty, the indigenous people knew the region very well and could easily escape if their working conditions were not satisfactory. The increasing tension between Biard and his guides is visible in another woodcut, titled Un bain dangereux (A Dangerous Swim) (see figure 5.24). The image shows four individuals standing on a riverbank. The diffuse light and the moon in the sky indicate that nightfall is beginning. Although the characters are shown only in silhouette, it is possible to identify the guard Zefirino, wearing his shako, and Polycarpe, represented in the usual caricatured way with very long legs and arms and prominent cheeks and lips. In the background, the canoe is anchored at the riverbank. A careful observation of the image allows the viewer to distinguish in the foreground four caimans lying barely visible among the aquatic plants. In the center of the composition Biard, too, is barely visible, floating on the water. The text that accompanies the image explains that whenever the painter and his companions arrived at a beach, they usually jumped into the river to swim. On this particular occasion, however, Biard alone jumped into the water while Zeferino, Polycarpe and the two paddlers remained onshore observing him. Biard writes, “Suddenly, with a particular movement of his

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Figure 5.24.  Un bain dangereux (A Dangerous Swim), woodcut signed by Édouard

Riou and Adolphe Gusmand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 507.

lips, I noticed that Polycarpe was pointing out something with his head that I did not see. All eyes turned that way, but not a movement took place among the group of spectators; they remained motionless.” Sensing that something horrible was going to happen, Biard reached the land in a few strokes and started running, eventually realizing what the threat was: “A few seconds more and I would have become the prey of several alligators, discovered and shown by the faithful Polycarpe to his comrades, who like himself, were waiting the outcome of a probable meeting between these animals and me. Certainly I had reason to engage in target practice with my revolver.”98 The woodcut represents the exact moment at which the caimans were about to strike the helpless painter. The low angle and central point of view give the viewer a unique perspective on the imminent accident, thereby increasing the atmosphere of suspense. Biard is not only the protagonist who faces the dangerous reptiles, he is also the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by his Native guides. The growing narrative tension, marked by repeated conflicts between

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Biard and his guides, reaches its peak in the woodcut Le gouffre de sable (The Sand Chasm), which depicts the painter’s violent reaction toward his Native guides, who had prepared a new trap for him (see figure 5.25). The group had once again stopped at a beach along the Amazon. Biard was about to disembark from the canoe, but the paddlers, the guard, and Polycarpe remained silent and motionless. Suspicious of their demeanor, the painter decided to check the depth of the river sand with a stick, so “instead of rushing, rifle in hand, as close to the shore as possible, I took a long pole of about fifteen feet, which we used as a mast, and fathomed the sand against which we were supported. The pole plunged more than halfway down without touching the bottom!”99 The woodcut shows Biard at the center of the action, standing with legs apart and holding a pole with both hands as he is about to hit his companions. The paddles and the guard’s shako are falling into the water, while the scared expressions of the four Natives and the two monkeys accentuate the caricatural effect of the image. Like the image, the narration of the incident and Biard’s anger is also colored by a touch of humor. Biard writes that “suddenly going from immobility to rage, I rained a hail of blows on each of my

Figure 5.25.  Le gouffre de sable (The Sand Chasm), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou,

François-Auguste Biard, and Charles Maurand, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 521.

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guides. They have made me not a man but a demon. I would have given anything to see them kick and take the offensive, but nobody moved. As Polycarpe was the culprit, I broke a paddle on his head. The wretch should be happy, as he no longer had to use it.”100 Here, as in previous passages on conflictual episodes between Biard and his servants, exaggeration helps to strengthen the qualities of the protagonist, who is able not only to face wild animals but also to attack several men at once while remaining balanced aboard the small canoe. As the “civilized” European man extends his contact with the “savage” world, he gradually becomes dominated by his instincts. Through his out-of-control, aggressive reaction, he paradoxically comes closer to the “wildness” from which he wants to separate himself. Realizing that Polycarpe and his companions were failing to ensure his safety, Biard was clearly afraid of being abandoned in the middle of the Amazonia. This fear was based not only on his own experience but also on what several white individuals had told him during his journey. Despite relying every day on Native labor, they emphasized that the Natives, in Biard’s words, “respect nothing; as soon as they take a fancy to leave, locals who use them are likewise abandoned every day. They are crude, they were never able to do anything and never will do anything.”101 The culmination of the long conflict between Biard and Polycarpe is illustrated in the woodcut Polycarpe étranglé (Polycarpe Strangled) and the accompanying text (see figure 5.26). As Polycarpe was walking away from him, the painter asked where he was going, to which the Native answered, “Walking in the woods.” Biard explains that in the Indian style of speaking, this response meant he was leaving for good. The painter reacted immediately: “I almost do not know what happened and how I found myself with my knee on Polycarpe, my five fingers covered with blood on his throat, and my revolver, which was undoubtedly out of my pocket and shaking convulsively in my hand, breaking his head.”102 Proud of his courage and violent reaction, Biard adds that the Native Miguel watched the scene without moving. Nevertheless, the account’s violence is diminished with the addition of a humorous comment: “If I did not kill the wretch[,] . . . it is because his cadaverous pallor made me think he was already beaten. This coppery Indian, almost black, had become unrecognizable and barely moved. I was afraid for a moment and stood up hastily. I

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Figure 5.26.  Polycarpe étranglé (Polycarpe Strangled), woodcut signed by Édouard Riou and François-Auguste Biard, in Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 637.

think I was as pale as he.” At the end of the travel narrative, the hero played by Biard has not only survived his Amazonian journey but was also able to overpower his opponent and take revenge in a final duel: “He threw himself on his knees, begged my pardon, promising me that if I brought him back to Pará I would not have to complain about him. What could I do except to forgive him?”103 The woodcut of this battle is in accordance with the text that describes Polycarpe lying on the ground and the painter pinning him down with his knee. The protagonist, Biard, and his antagonist, Polycarpe, occupy the central place in the scene and for the first time are depicted in detail and together. Perhaps because the image clearly represents a confrontation on equal ground, in this portrayal it is noteworthy that Polycarpe does not look like a Native but instead resembles a black man. Miguel, the third character, is just a dark silhouette who remains in the shadow in an ancillary position, his face barely visible to the viewer. Even though the approach is humorous in exaggerating the conflict that opposed the two characters now depicted in a fight, the image and the text emphasize tropical romanticism’s features by

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reinforcing the superiority of the French hero over the indigenous world. Concluding the conflict, Biard explains that the unarmed Native, afraid of being killed, implored for clemency, and to prove his benevolence the painter forgave him. The Degenerate Native

Many woodcuts in Deux années au Brésil document Brazilian Native populations from an ethnographic approach. Although Biard could have invented some of the information, the ethnographic portraits, the portrayals of rituals and ceremonies, and the artifacts listed in the estate sale catalog of the painter’s studio coincide with evidence presented by later travelers and anthropologists. These visual and written descriptions, almost unknown to many scholars, undeniably contribute to an understanding of Brazilian Native populations. Yet this is not the most original feature of the woodcuts examined in this chapter. Compared to the images produced by Biard’s predecessors Spix, Martius, Debret, and Rugendas, the woodcuts in Deux années au Brésil introduce a way of representing Brazilian Natives that marks the painter’s approach of tropical romanticism. Beyond echoing the traditional opposition of the “good savage” and the cannibal, Biard’s travelogue portrays the Native as degenerate and corrupt. As the text and the engravings show, these negative representations of Brazilian Amerindians, who had been in contact with Western civilization for more than three centuries, are attributable to Native efforts to resist and negotiate the living and working conditions imposed on them by white settlers. In the travelogue this new representation of the Natives rests on the contrast between the protagonist Biard and the Native antagonists. Yet most of the engravings that highlight conflicts between the painter and his servants or models are characterized by exaggeration. Biard is represented as a mighty hero, whereas the Natives are constantly ridiculed. In addition, several portraits of what the painter calls civilized Natives are marked by humor. The cartoonlike artistic treatment in these portraits is aimed not at describing the physical features of the models but rather at amusing the reader. Above all, by representing the Brazilian Natives as untrustworthy and wicked, Biard seeks to promote his own character as the hero of the narrative.

conclusion

Multidimensional Tropics •

the foregoing analysis of the written and visual representations in Deux années au Brésil shows that this travelogue belongs to a long European tradition of travel accounts in which Brazil and its populations of color are portrayed through three modes of enunciation: description, commentary, and narration. Like other travel accounts published by European artists, travelers, and scientists, Biard’s travelogue features a particular image of Brazil that I call tropical romanticism. This French vision, which was developed in the nineteenth century, derives not only from illustrations in sixteenthcentury travel accounts of Brazil but also from the perspectives of exoticism and Orientalism. It is marked by the interactions of the European traveler with Brazilian populations of color as well as with the country’s wild fauna and flora. Transformed and incorporated into the country’s national narrative, this vision reinforced the idea of Brazil as a country where racial harmony predominates, a concept later transformed into the ideology of racial democracy. Yet nineteenth-century illustrated European travel accounts also expose the conflicts and ambiguities that emerged from encounters between Europeans and Brazilian Natives. Consequently, the visual images produced from these problematic contacts, especially those involving populations of color, often perpetuated derogatory stereotypes. Like his predecessors, Biard describes and illustrates the Brazilian fauna and flora through words and images. Despite being warmly received by the Brazilian royal court in Rio de Janeiro, Biard chose not to establish himself

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as an official painter in a distant tropical society in which monarchy and slavery predominated but instead to paint the Brazilian wilderness and Brazilian Amerindians. His concern with documenting this world is visible in his many ethnographic portraits of Brazilian Natives. Yet his contacts with the Amerindians were very contradictory. His desire to meet indigenous peoples arose not from a humanistic or scientific interest but rather from his desire to collect objects and portraits no matter what means he had to employ. The representations of Brazil in Biard’s travelogue are based on a dual romantic image of the jungle as a place of origin and peace and a place full of traps and perils. Thus the narrative of Deux années au Brésil revolves around the painter’s continuous fight against the antagonistic forces of nature and conflicts with characters representing local populations of color. This continuous struggle helps to construct Biard as a character with multiple roles: artist, traveler, adventurer, naturalist, and ethnographer. Biard was certainly an acute observer, but unlike other nineteenth-­ century European travelers to Brazil he rarely makes informed statements about the country’s sociopolitical realities. In describing Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Pará, Maranhão, and Amazonas, he often mentions the presence of enslaved, freed, and freeborn blacks. While focusing on the activities and behavior of black men and women, the painter avoids criticizing the institution of slavery. His remarks, almost always loaded with humor and irony, exempt him from any serious social responsibility. His attitude is not surprising, because although he traveled to the country by his own means, on his arrival he relied on strong financial and social support from the Brazilian monarchy. He quickly adopted the mentality of Brazilian slave society. Throughout his sojourn, he hired enslaved blacks and Amerindians in exchange for alcohol and food, thereby clearly incorporating and repeating elements of the viewpoints propagated by the reigning elites. For example, Biard argued that slaves in Brazil were better off than recent European immigrants who were arriving in the country to replace the African workforce after the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade. Biard praised the exoticism of Brazilian Natives. Yet he often accused Native and black servants of being wretched, thieving, lazy, and drunk, thereby contributing to the dissemination of European cultural stereotypes of these exotic populations.

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Narration is the predominant and innovative mode of enunciation in the text and engravings of Deux années au Brésil, which often highlight a pending or imminent episode in which Biard is the protagonist. In his contacts with wildlife and Natives, the painter finds himself in different situations of conflict, danger, and suffering. His character grows as he fights various antagonists, whether human, animal, or climatic. This constant struggle constructs a protagonist who at several points in the text and engravings resembles an epic hero. Thus the image of Brazil conveyed in the engravings is founded in Biard’s relations of conflict and cooperation with either Native and black populations or the fauna and the mysterious and dangerous rain forest. Biard spent several months in Rio de Janeiro, but he did not depict the city in detail in any engravings, in contrast to the meticulous architectural renderings of British and French travelers like Jean-Baptiste Debret, Thomas Ewbank, and Henry Chamberlain. Without concealing his disappointment on discovering that the majority of the population in cities like Salvador and Rio de Janeiro was black, the painter elected to represent comical scenes featuring enslaved, freed, and freeborn black individuals. Most of the woodcuts rendering urban daily life take a satirical approach, not only ridiculing particular characters but also highlighting Biard’s interactions with the city’s population of color. Represented in a caricatural and stereotyped manner, these black characters are largely indistinguishable in their physical features and dress. The prevailing image of black individuals is one of debauchery, laziness, and lack of hygiene. Yet Biard’s images are also ambiguous, because they also satirize the white, European-origin population and poke fun at the widespread use of slave labor in the city. Throughout Biard’s sojourn in Espírito Santo and the Amazonia, black individuals appear in a very different light, assisting him and facilitating his contacts with the Natives, who resisted his painting and photography projects. Action predominates in Biard’s illustrations of the rain forest, which becomes a place with no points of reference. A labyrinth full of dangers, the jungle is a space in which death can happen at any time. As the written and visual narrative progresses, the forest becomes the domain of wildlife, bringing the artist closer to the sacred yet ephemeral dimension of human existence. However, reinforcing his contribution to tropical romanticism, he

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fully integrated the indigenous people into the forest, where all kinds of action, like hunting and fishing, take place. This representation of the jungle as a scene reaches its summit in certain engravings, probably based on photographs, which in a very modern and nearly abstract manner reduce the rain forest to a network of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. Unlike the travelogues by Debret and Rugendas, Deux années au Brésil does not feature idealized representations of Brazilian indigenous populations. Biard certainly shows an ethnographic concern, to which most historians have not paid attention. This concern is visible in the naturalistic approach of some of Biard’s portraits of Amerindian men and women, whose faces and bodies are far from idealized. Although the engravings of rituals and ceremonies are less clearly naturalistic, the text describing these images does provide accurate ethnographic information, most of which can be confirmed by other travelers, naturalists, and anthropologists who were in contact with Brazilian Native populations in earlier and later decades. Biard also innovates by introducing a new image of “civilized” Native populations. Demonized or ridiculed, these Natives are not represented in the tradition of the “noble savage” but rather are portrayed as degenerate, corrupt, cowardly, and untrustworthy. Despite these derogatory representations, the woodcuts of the conflicts between Biard and his servants take a highly original approach, similar to a snapshot that captures a moment of action and renders it like a cartoon. The official narratives about the formation of Brazilian society largely rely on images produced by European travelers and are also inseparable from the country’s insertion in the South Atlantic system, which is deeply rooted in the multiple encounters among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans. In the twentieth century French scholars like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Verger continued the tradition started by early French explorers like André Thevet and Jean de Léry and after them Debret and Biard. The engravings and photographs from their travel accounts are still reproduced in magazines, books, and Internet websites and are the subject of exhibitions. Reinter­preted and reappropriated, these images represent Brazil by emphasizing allegedly harmonious interactions among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans. In addition to providing important information about the period, places,

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and populations depicted, Biard’s travelogue certainly added a new dimension to the previous representations of Brazil. With its satirical approach and by explicitly portraying episodes of conflict with Natives and other individuals of color, Deux années au Brésil disturbed the widespread idealized images of cordial race relations that allegedly existed in Brazil.

Notes

•

Introduction









1. Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 31. 2. Although it is presumed that several photographs inspired Biard’s sketches and engravings, the painter was not a professional photographer. Because of the difficult conditions of his travel in the Amazonia, the quality of the photographs was probably poor, and his pictures have never been located. 3. All English translations of primary and secondary sources from Portuguese and French are mine, except when indicated otherwise. “Échos de Rio de Janeiro,” Courier du Brésil, May 29, 1859. 4. François-Auguste Biard, “Voyage au Brésil,” Le Tour du monde, July–December 1861. 5. François-Auguste Biard, Deux années au Brésil (Paris: Hachette, 1862). 6. Among these exhibitions are Les années romantiques: La peinture française de 1815 à 1850 at Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, Nantes, France (December 4, 1995, to March 17, 1996), at Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, France (April 16 to July 15, 1996), and at Palazzo Gotico, Piacenza, Italy (September 6 to November 17, 1996); and François Auguste Biard: O indígena e o olhar romantico, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo (May 15 to August 30, 2010). 7. In Brazil Biard’s paintings can be found in the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro), in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo), and in the private collections of João Henrique d’Orléans and Bragança (Rio de Janeiro), Brasiliana (São Paulo), and Zózimo Gomes da Costa (São Paulo). 8. My book Romantisme tropical: L’aventure d’un peintre français au Brésil (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008) is the only book-length study focusing on Biard’s work. Pedro de Andrade Alvim’s doctoral dissertation, examining

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Biard’s whole painted production, has remained unpublished; see Pedro de Andrade Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle: L’œuvre du peintre FrançoisAuguste Biard (1798–1882)” (PhD dissertation, Université de Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne, 2001). 9. Louis Énault, “Courrier artistique et litéraire,” Le Papillon, April 10, 1862; Vivien de Saint-Martin, “Sciences historiques: chronique,” Le Temps, April 22, 1862. 10. François-Auguste Biard, Dois anos no Brasil, trans. Mario Sette (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1945). 11. “Folhetim do Jornal do comércio,” Jornal do comércio, July 19, 1882. Thanks to Rogério Rosa, who sent me a copy of this newspaper article, found in the collections of Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. John Stockwell, dir., Turistas (Los Angeles: Foxatomic, 2006), DVD; Luis Llosa, dir., Anaconda (Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1997), DVD. 15. Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 16. 16. The work of Katherine Emma Manthorne focuses on representations of Latin American tropical nature by North American artists, a tendency that she calls tropical renaissance; see Katherine Emma Manthorne, Tropical Renaissance: North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839–1879 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989). 17. Tzvetan Todorov, Nous et les autres: La réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 297; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 5. 18. Todd Porterfield, The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French Imperialism, 1798–1836 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 43–79. 19. Peter Ross, “Don’t Trust the Locals: European Explorers in Amazonia,” in Literature and Travel, ed. Michael Hane (Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993), 93–109. 20. Said, Orientalism, 40. 21. On image and anachronism, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps: Histoire de l’art et anachronisme des images (Paris: Minuit, 2000), 25. 22. Louis Marin identifies narrative and description as the “two major modalities of enunciation”; see Louis Marin, On Representation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 207. On description and narration, see also Svetlana Alpers, “Describe or Narrate? A Problem in Realistic Representation,” New Literary History 8, no. 1 (1976): 15–41; and Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 119–68. 23. Roland Bourneuf and Réal Ouellet, L’univers du roman (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1972), 95.

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24. On the idea of ambivalence as “one of the most significant discursive and physical strategies of discriminatory power,” see Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 95.

Chapter 1











1. Archives de la Seine et Marne, “Acte de décès de François Thérèse Biard, 20 de junho de 1882,” 57I, 80, 37; see also Louis Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard (Paris: Auguste Blaizot Éditeur, 1927), 2. 2. Louis Boivin, Notice sur M. Biard (Paris: Tous les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1842). During the first half of the nineteenth century, Boivin contributed to several publications, including Encyclopédie des gens du monde, Fastes de la Légion d’Honneur, L’illustration, and the Magasin pittoresque. In 1842 he published the book Souvenir de la vie du duc d’Orléans. Boivin was probably a friend of Biard’s, and Biard may have commissioned his biography. See Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 6. 3. Claude-Ennemond-Balthasar Cochet (1760–1835) was an architect from Lyon. He received the Prix de Rome for architecture in 1783. He was a professor of architecture at the Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon from 1814 to 1824. See also the entry on Cochet, in Pierre Larousse, ed., Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle: Français, historique, géographique, mythologique, bibliographique, littéraire, artistique, scientifique, etc. français, vol. 4 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1982). 4. Ibid., 4:9. 5. Ibid.; see also the entry on the Count of Forbin in Emmanuel Benezit, ed. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d’écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers, vol. 5 (Paris: Éditions Gründ, 1999); and Pierre Angrand, Le Comte de Forbin et le Louvre en 1819 (Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1972), 12–13. 6. Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, L’État et les artistes: De la Restauration à la Monarchie de Juillet (1815–1833) (Paris: Flammarion, 1999), 18. 7. Unveiled on April 24, 1818; see Chaudonneret, L’État et les artistes, 32. 8. Ibid., 22. 9. Boivin, Notice sur M. Biard, 14–15. 10. David Karel, Dictionnaire des artistes de langue française en Amérique du Nord (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1992), 82. 11. Alexandre Lenoir, “Mémoires: Le Salon de 1838,” Journal de l’Institut Historique 8, no. 46 (1838): 182. 12. Arthur Dinaux, “Exposition publique des arts et de l’industrie de Valenciennes en 1838,” in Mémoires de la Société d’agriculture, sciences et arts de l’arrondissement de Valenciennes (Valenciennes, France: Prignet, 1841), 3: 27. 13. Ibid.

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14. Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 24. 15. Ibid., 23; see also the website of the Musée du Luxembourg, http://www. museeduluxembourg.fr/en/le-musee/histoire/. 16. Chaudonneret, L’état et les artistes, 36. 17. Ibid. 18. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 1. 19. Chaudonneret, L’État et les artistes, 60. 20. Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean (New York: Penguin, 2010), 241–42. 21. Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 90. 22. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 6. 23. Chaudonneret, L’État et les artistes, 149. 24. Karel, Dictionnaire des artistes, 602. 25. These paintings are Entrevue de Louis-Philippe et de Victoria à bord du yacht Victoria and Albert, 2 septembre 1843 (Meeting of Louis-Philippe and Victoria on Board the Yacht Victoria and Albert, September 2, 1843); La Reine d’Angleterre visitant l’escadre française est reçue à bord du steamer Le Gomer par le contre-amiral Lasusse, 15 octobre 1844 (The Queen of England Visiting the French Squadron Is Received on Board the Steamer Le Gomer by Rear Admiral Lasusse, October 15, 1844); and Le départ de Douvres de sa Majesté le roi, octobre 1844 (The Departure of the Douvres of His Majesty the King, October 1844). 26. Samuel-Henry Berthoud, “Le singe de Biard,” Musée des familles, June 1839. 27. Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 49–50; see also John Milner, The Studios of Paris: The Capital of Art in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 28. Atelier de M. Biard: Tableaux, études d’après nature, objets étrangers, armes, vases, costumes, meubles, etc. (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1865), 25. 29. Archives de la Seine et Marne, “Inventaire après décès François-AugusteThérèse Biard,” August 19, 1882. In his travelogue, Biard mentions his interest in taxidermy several times; it is an activity to which he dedicates a great deal of time during the period he spent in the Brazilian rain forest. 30. Berthoud, “Le singe de Biard.” 31. Ibid. 32. Atelier de M. Biard, 23–26. Iron masks were usually employed to prevent slaves from eating dirt; see Jerome S. Handler and Annis Steiner, “Identifying Pictorial Images of Atlantic Slavery: Three Case Studies,” Slavery and Abolition 27, no. 1 (2006): 59–61. See also Sera L. Young, Craving Earth: Understanding Pica; The Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 74–75. 33. Succession de M. Biard—Tableaux, études, aquarelles, dessins (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1883).

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34. Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 159. 35. Barbara Matilsky, “François-Auguste Biard: Artist-NaturalistExplorer,” Gazette des beaux arts 127, no. 1393 (1985): 78; Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 160. 36. Barbara Matilsky, “Sublime Landscape Painting in Nineteenth Century France: Alpine and Arctic Iconography and Their Relationship to Natural History” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1983), 140–41. 37. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 28. 38. Léonie d’Aunet, Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg (Paris: Hachette, 1875). 39. Two of them are Le Duc d’Orléans recevant l’hospitalité sous une tente de Lapons, août 1795 (The Duke of Orleans Receiving Hospitality in a Tent of Lapps, August 1795) and Le Duc d’Orléans descendant le grand rapide de l’Eijanpaïkka, août 1795 (The Duke of Orleans Descending the Great Eijanpaïkka Rapids), both executed in 1841. 40. Matilsky, “François-Auguste Biard,” 157. 41. Ibid., 160. 42. Boivin, Notice sur M. Biard, 44. 43. Ibid., 45. 44. Atelier de M. Biard, 13. 45. Succession de M. Biard. 46. Samuel-Henry Berthoud, “Moeurs norwegiennes,” Musée des familles, April, 1840. 47. François-Auguste Biard, “Entre Christiana et Drontheim,” Musée des familles, June 1841. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 371. 54. Ibid. 55. Jean Savant, La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo, vol. 2, Madame Biard avant le scandale (Paris: J. Savant, 1982), 6. 56. Savant, La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo, 2:35, 92. 57. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 66; André Maurois, Olympio ou la vie de Victor Hugo (Paris: Hachette, 1970), 305. 58. André Gayot, Une ancienne muscadine: Fortunée Hamelin; Lettres inédites, 1839–1851 (Paris: Émile-Paul Éditeur, 1911), 152. 59. For an overview of the correspondence between Victor Hugo and Léonie d’Aunet, see Jean Gaudon, Lettres de Victor Hugo à Léonie Biard (Paris: Claude Blaizot, 1990). 60. Gayot, Une ancienne Muscadine, 147. 61. Douglas Siler, James Pradier: Correspondance, vol. 1, 1790–1833 (Geneva: Droz,

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1984), 113. Juliette Drouet, Pradier’s wife, also became Hugo’s mistress; see Paul Sochon, La plus aimante ou Victor Hugo entre Juliette et Madame Biard avec des lettres inédites (Paris: Albin Michel, 1941), 24. 62. Jean Savant, La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo, vol. 3, Du scandale au coup d’État et à l’agonie (Paris: J. Savant, 1982), 3. 63. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 75. 64. Victor Hugo, “La fête chez Thérèse,” in Les contemplations (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1990), 102–4. 65. Berthoud, “Le singe de Biard.” 66. Quoted in Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 279. 67. Savant, La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo, 2:39. 68. Ibid. 69. Savant, La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo, 3:3. 70. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 115–16, 261. 71. Christian Croisille, Correspondance d’Alphonse de Lamartine (1830–1867), vol. 4, 1842–1846 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 569; Jean Bonnerot, Sainte-Beuve: Correspondance générale, vol. 6, 1845–1846 (Paris: Éditions Stock, 1949), 184; Sochon, La plus aimante, 40. 72. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 119. 73. In addition to Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg, Léonie D’Aunet published several novels and plays, including Jane Osborn: Drame en quatre actes (Paris: A. Taride, 1855), Une place à la cour (Poissy, France: Imprimeur d’Arbieu, 1854), Un mariage en province (Paris: Hachette, 1857), Une vengeance (Paris: Hachette, 1857), Etiennette, Sylvère, le secret (Paris: Hachette, 1859), and L’héritage du marquis d’Elvigny: Les deux légendes d’Hardenstein (Paris: Hachette, 1863). 74. Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 1846 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1975), 170. 75. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame, 135. 76. Hugh Honour, L’image du noir dans l’art occidental, vol. I, De la Révolution américaine à la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 15, 172; Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 71. 77. According to Chantal Georgel, it was a false commission. The painting was purchased for 2,400 francs. See Chantal Georgel, 1848—La République et l’art vivant (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 182. 78. François-Auguste Biard, Chantal Edel, and J.-P. Sicre, Le pèlerin de l’enfer vert: Rio-Amazonie, 1858–1859 (Paris: Phébus, 1995), 13. 79. François-Auguste Biard, “Voyage au Brésil,” Le Tour du monde, July–December 1861. The account was published in six issues. Some passages were also published in a series of articles in the illustrated magazine La Semaine des familles, April 7, 1860. See also Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 6–7. 80. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 6–7. 81. Jean-Baptiste Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1834–1839). French and German editions of Rugendas’s travelogue were published simultaneously as Maurice Rugendas, Voyage

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pittoresque dans le Brésil (Paris: Engelmann, 1835) and Johann Moritz Rugendas, Malerische Reise in Brasilien (Mühlhausen, Germany: Engelmann, 1835). 82. François-Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Marie d’Orléans, Prince de Joinville, Vieux souvenirs: 1818–1848 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1895), 94; see also Léonce Grandin, Le Prince de Joinville: Sa vie, ses oeuvres (Abbeville, France: C. Paillart, 1899); and Jacques Guillon, François d’Orléans: Prince de Joinville (Paris: France-Empire, 1990). 83. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 8. 84. Ibid., 3–4. 85. Ibid., 42. An announcement with the itinerary of the steamer Tyne was also published in the Courrier de Paris on April 1 and 8, 1858. 86. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 115, 267. 87. Ibid., 296, 340. 88. “Movimento do porto,” Gazeta official, December 7, 1859. Biard’s departure was also announced in “Avisos Diversos,” Gazeta official, November 26, 1859, as follows: “François Biard departed from the Empire, what it is made public in compliance with the law.” 89. Karel, Dictionnaire des artistes, 82; Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 679. 90. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 21–22. 91. Ibid., 29. 92. Ibid., 28–29. 93. The deceased friend was Altève Aumont, the French journalist who arrived in Brazil with Biard in 1858; see Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 11; and “From Rio de Janeiro: Court Matters Naval and Shipping Intelligence; Americans in Brazil; Miscellanous,” New York Times, April 21, 1860, http://www.nytimes. com/1860/04/21/news/rio-janeiro-court-matters-naval-shipping-intelligenceamericans-brazil.html. 94. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 37. 95. Ibid., 38. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid., 11. On the painter’s stay in the Hotel Ravot, see “Chronique du moment,” Courrier du Brésil, May 9, 1858. On Altève Aumont, see Letícia Gregório Canelas, “Franceses ‘quarante-huitards’ no império dos trópicos (1848–1862)” (MA thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2007), 141. 98. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 51. 99. Ibid., 73–85. For more details about the French artistic mission, see chapter 2 of this book. 100. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 49–50. 101. In Deux années au Brésil, most names are abbreviated, including the name of Paulo Barbosa da Silva, who has been designated as “M.P.B”; see Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, As barbas do imperador (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998), 86; and Roderick Barman, Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825–1891 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 49.

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102. Barman, Citizen Emperor, 147–48. 103. Schwarcz, As barbas do imperador, 529. 104. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 56. 105. Ibid., 102. 106. “Chronique du moment,” Courrier du Brésil, May 9, 1858. 107. “Crônica Diária,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, May 25, 1858. 108. “Livro do Domingo,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, May 31, 1858. 109. “Livro do Domingo,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, June 27, 1858. 110. “Letter of Biard to Lefèbre,” July 29, 1858, Rio de Janeiro, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Fonds Charavay, 446; see the partial transcription of this letter in Alvim, “Le Monde comme spectacle,” 411. 111. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 102. 112. The Viscount of Maranguape was the minister of foreign affairs several times during the monarchy; see Nei Lopes, Dicionário escolar afro-brasileiro (São Paulo: Selo Negro, 2006), 68. 113. Barman, Citizen Emperor, 148. I am grateful to Roderick Barman for helping me to identify Maria Eugênia Lopes de Paiva. Aumont refers to her as Eugênia Guedes Pinto; see Altève Aumont, “Courrier d’Amérique—Rio de Janeiro,” Revue des races latines, October 9, 1858. 114. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 114. 115. Ibid., 74–75. 116. Schwarcz, As barbas do imperador, 140. 117. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 102–5. 118. Schwarcz, As barbas do imperador, 320. 119. Ibid., 95. 120. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 71. 121. Ibid., 74. 122. “As Belas Artes no Brasil: O Pintor Francez M. Biard,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, June 24, 1858. 123. Ibid. 124. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 78. 125. “Beneficencia e Bellas Artes: Exposição de pinturas e objetos de arte; Diário de Annuncios,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, September 26, 1858. 126. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 71–72. 127. “Crônica Diária,” Diário do Rio de Janeiro, May 28, 1858. 128. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 75. 129. Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Ministério do Império, Registros de Ofícios da Academia de Belas Artes (1847–1861), AM 208, COD 9878, July 29, 1859, 121v–122. 130. Ibid., August 10, 1859, 123v. Ferreira Gullar mentions a letter by Biard dated September 29, 1859, that may be housed at the Arquivo Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, but I was not able to locate it. In this letter, which was sent from

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Manaus, Biard answered that before accepting the invitation he needed to return to Europe. See Ferreira Gullar, 150 anos de pintura no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Colorama Artes Gráficas, 1989), 64. 131. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 460–62. 132. “Lettre de Biard à Lefèbre,” in Alvim, “Le monde comme spectacle,” 411. 133. Guimbaud, Victor Hugo et Madame Biard, 202. 134. Michel Laclotte, ed., Petit Larousse de la peinture (Paris: Larousse, 1979); Isabelle Julia, Jean Lacambre, Sylvain Boyer, and Claude Cosneau-Allemand, Les années romantiques: La peinture française de 1815 à 1850; Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, 4 décembre 1995–17 mars 1996, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 16 avril–15 juillet 1996, Palazzo Gotico, Plaisance, 6 septembre–17 novembre 1996 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1995), 332. 135. Biard, “Voyage au Brésil.” 136. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 115. Biard refers to the steamer as Mercury, but its actual name was Mucuri; see Levy Rocha, Viajantes estrangeiros no Espírito Santo (Brasília: Editora de Brasília, 1971), 92. 137. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 120. 138. Ibid., 123. 139. Ibid., 296. 140. Ibid., 306. 141. Biard’s name is on the list of passengers of the steamer Paraná published in a Maranhão newspaper; see “Registro do Porto: Entrada do dia 6,” PublicadorMaranhense, July 7, 1859. 142. “Movimento do Porto,” Gazeta official, July 10, 1959. 143. Biard’s name appears on a list of passengers heading to Manaus; see “Relação das pessoas despachadas no dia 16; Repartiçao da polícia,” Gazeta official, August 17, 1859. 144. Biard’s name appears as “F. Biard, Naturalist” on a list of passengers, dated November 3, 1859, and published in a local newspaper in Pará, of the steamer Marajó that sailed from Manaus to Belém; see “A Pedidos,” Gazeta official, November 6, 1859.

Chapter 2 1. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 107. 2. André Thevet, Les singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement nommée Amérique et de plusieurs terres et isles découvertes de notre temps (Paris: Maurice de La Porte: 1557); Hans Staden, Warhaftige Historia und Beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der wilden, nacketen, grimmigen Menschfresser Leuthen, in der Newenwelt America gelegen, vor vnd nach Christi Geburt im Land zu Hessen vnbekant, biss vff dise ij: Nechst vergangene Jar, da sie Hans Staden von Homberg auss Hessen durch seine eygne Erfarung erkant, vnd yetzo durch den Truck

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an Tag gibt (Marburg, Germany: Andress Kolben, 1557); Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dit Amérique (La Rochelle, France: A. Chuppin, 1578). For more recent editions of these travel accounts, see André Thevet, Le Brésil d’André Thevet: Les Singularités de la France antarctique (1557) (Paris: Chandeigne, 1997); and Jean de Léry and Frank Lestringant, Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, 1557 (édition de 1580) (Montpellier, France: Max Chaleil, 1992). The first translation of Staden’s travelogue into English was published in the nineteenth century; see Richard F. Burton, The Captivity of Hans Staden of Hesse: In A.D. 1547–1555, among the Wild Tribes of Eastern Brazil (London: Hakluyt Society, 1874). The most recent edition in English of Staden’s travel account is Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier, eds., Hans Staden’s True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). Also on Hans Staden, see Eve M. Duffy and Alida C. Metcalf, The Return of Hans Staden: A Go-Between in the Atlantic (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 3. Alexander von Humboldt and his travel companion, Aimé Bonpland, traveled to South America in 1799 but were not given permission to enter Brazil; see Cerue Kesso Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt: Triangular Perceptions and the Colonial Gaze in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Narratives” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2008), 13. 4. Charles-Marie de La Condamine, Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’intérieur de l’Amérique méridionale: depuis la côte de la Mer du Sud, jusqu’aux côtes du Brésil et de la Guyane en descendant la rivière des Amazones (Paris: Chez la Veuve Pissot, 1745); Yves d’Evreux, Voyage dans le Nord du Brésil: Fait durant les années 1613 et 1614 (unpublished manuscript, 1615), which was published only in 1864; Johannes Nieuhof, Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee-en Lantreize: Behelzende Al het geen op dezelve is voorgevallen; Beneffens Een bondige beschrijving van gantsch Neerlants Brasil (Amsterdam: Voor de Weduwe van Jacob van Meurs, op de Keizers gracht, 1682). 5. Carlos Julião and Lygia da Fonseca Fernandes da Cunha, Riscos illuminados de figurinhos de brancos e negros dos uzos do Rio de Janeiro e Serro do Frio (Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, 1960). About Julião’s work, see Silvia Hunold Lara, “Customs and Costumes: Carlos Julião and the Image of Black Slaves in Late Eighteenth-Century Brazil,” Slavery and Aboliton 23, no. 2 (2002): 125–46. 6. Bartolomé Bennassar and Richard Marin, Histoire du Brésil (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 182. 7. Amado Luiz Cervo, “Entre l’Europe et l’Amérique: La Politique extérieure du Brésil au XIXe siècle (1808–1912),” in Le Brésil, l’Europe et les équilibres internationaux—XVIe–XXe siècles, ed. Katia de Queirós Mattoso, Idelette Muzart-Fonseca dos Santos, and Denis Rolland (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999), 196. 8. Príncipe Regente Dom João, “Carta ao Conde da Ponte, admitindo nas

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alfândegas do Brasil toda e qualquer mercadoria estrangeira, ao mesmo tempo em que permitia a exportação dos produtos da terra, à exceção do pau-brasil, para os países que se conservaram em paz com a coroa portuguesa,” January 28, 1808, Bahia, Biblioteca Nacional (BN), Rio de Janeiro, Seção de manuscritos, document no. 49.4.1, fol. 1. 9. Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 8. 10. Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 65. 11. Schwarcz, As barbas do imperador, 35; Lília Moritz Schwarcz, O sol do Brasil: Nicolas-Antoine Taunay e as desventuras dos artistas franceses na corte de D. João (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008), 170. 12. Armelle Enders, Histoire de Rio de Janeiro (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 102. 13. Kirsten Schultz, Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 106–7. 14. Bennassar and Marin, Histoire du Brésil, 186; Schultz, Tropical Versailles, 83. 15. Dom João Carlos de Bragança had actually governed Portugal since 1792 because his mother, Queen Dona Maria I, suffered from dementia and was therefore declared incapable of governing Portugal. However, it was only in 1799 that Dom João Carlos de Bragança officially became prince regent. 16. Schultz, Tropical Versailles, 120. 17. “Account of the Botocudos, a Savage Tribe of Brazil,” New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, July 1, 1820. 18. Enders, Histoire de Rio de Janeiro, 106. 19. Johan Baptist von Spix and Karl Friedrich Philip von Martius, Reise in Brasilien auf Befehl Sr. Maj. Maximilian Joseph I., Königs von Bayern in den Jahren 1817–1820: Mit Karten und Abbildungen (München, Germany: Lindauer, 1823), translated into English as Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1817–1820: Undertaken by Command of His Majesty the King of Bavaria (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824). On their travelogues, see Karen Macknow Lisboa, Nova Atlântida de Spix e Martius: Natureza e civilização na Viagem pelo Brasil, 1817–1820 (São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 1997). 20. Lila Moritz Schwarcz, “Le complexe de Zé Carioca: Notes sur une certaine identité métisse et malandra,” Lusotopie, 1997, 249–66; Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, “A Mestizo and Tropical Country: The Creation of the Official Image of Independent Brazil,” Revista Europea de Estudos Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 80 (2006): 25–42. 21. Karl F. von Martius, “Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil,” Revista Trimestral de História e Geografia ou Jornal do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brazileiro 6, no. 24 (1845): 382. 22. Ibid., 384. 23. Ibid., 385.

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24. Ibid., 387. 25. Quirino Campofiorito, História da pintura brasileira no século XIX, vol. 2, A missão artística francesa e seus discípulos, 1816–1840 (Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheque, 1983), 20–21. 26. Schwarcz, O sol do Brasil, 13. 27. Campofiorito, História da pintura brasileira, 2:21; Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:24. 28. These various name changes were not associated with changes in artistic orientation but rather resulted from political conflicts among the French, English, and Portuguese factions who were fighting to control the institution; see Campofiorito, História da pintura brasileira, 2:24–25. 29. Mario Carelli, À la découverte de l’Amazonie: Les carnets du naturaliste Hercule Florence (Paris, Gallimard, 1992), 102. 30. The journal was titled Voyage dans l’intérieur du Brésil, fait par le soussigné, en qualité de dessinateur de M. le chevalier de Langsdorff, naturaliste et consul général de Russie au Brésil: Années 1825–1826–1827–1828 et 1829 [signé] Hercule Florence. Florence’s journal was translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Brasil in 1875. A partial version of the journal is also found in Carelli, À la découverte de l’Amazonie. 31. Boris Kossoy, Hercule Florence: A descoberta isolada da fotografia no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006). 32. Luiz Emygidio de Mello Filho, ed., A expedição Langsdorff ao Brasil, 1821–1829 (Rio de Janeiro: Alumbramento, 1998). In 1990 Boris Komissarov, the Russian president of the International Association of Langsdorff Studies, in a joint initiative with the Brazilian institutions the Osvaldo Cruz Foundation and the National Foundation of Health, brought to Brazil the microfilms of the expedition’s documents, which today are housed at Fiocruz (Rio de Janeiro). The drawings, manuscripts, and documents that belong to the Cyrillo Hercules Florence Collection are in possession of Leila Florence de Moraes, a descendant of Hercule Florence, who lives in Brazil. In addition, five handwritten journals by Hercule Florence are housed in the collections of the Institute Hercule Florence for Environmental and Societal Studies in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, created in 2006; its website is http://www.ihf19.0rg.br/. 33. Marie-Monique Bernard, “Jean-Baptiste Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil (1834),” in L’œil aux aguets ou l’artiste en voyage, ed. François Moreau (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), 167; Alfonso de E. Taunay, A missão artística de 1816 (Brasília: Editora da Universidade de Brasília, 1983), 217. On Debret in the twentieth century as well as on his years in Brazil, see João Fernando de Almeida Prado, O artista Debret e o Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1989). 34. Mario Carelli, Cultures croisées: Histoire des échanges culturels entre la France et le Brésil de la découverte aux temps modernes (Paris: Nathan, 1993), 62–63.

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35. The three-volume travelogue was published in folio format, composed of six plates and an explanatory text in each volume, with one volume released every fifteen days. 36. Most of the lithographs were executed by Debret himself, but for some he was assisted by a Madame Deportes; see Valéria Lima, Jean-Baptiste Debret, historiador e pintor: A Viagem pitoresca e histórica ao Brasil (1816–1839) (Campinas: Editora da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2007), 153. 37. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 1:2–3. 38. Ibid., 1:26. 39. Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 33. 40. Ibid.; Boris Fausto, História concisa do Brasil (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006), 15; Alida C. Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 182. 41. Carelli, Cultures croisées, 64. 42. Xavier-Philippe Guiochon, “Le Brésil face au regard artistique français: Debret et la mission artistique de 1816,” Cahiers du Brésil contemporain 23–24 (1994): 42. 43. Ibid., 47. 44. Ibid., 44. 45. Although Wied-Neuwied’s initial perception of the Botocudo was negative, this image was gradually transformed; see Christina Rostworksi da Costa, “O Príncipe Maximiliano de Wied-Neuwied e sua Viagem ao Brasil (1815–1817)” (MA thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 2008). 46. Thekla Hartmann, A contribuição da iconografia para o conhecimento de índios brasileiros do século XIX (São Paulo: Museu Paulista, 1975), 69. 47. Guiochon, “Le Brésil face”; Bernard, “Jean-Baptiste Debret.” 48. Rodrigo Naves, A forma difícil—Ensaios sobre a arte brasileira (São Paulo: Ática, 1996), 104; Carelli, Cultures croisées, 65–66. 49. Naves, A forma difícil, 41–129; Patrick Straumann, ed., Rio de Janeiro, cidade mestiça (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001). 50. Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande e senzala (São Paulo: Global, 2003). The first English translation was published in the United States in 1946; see Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986). 51. Hartmann, A contribuição da iconografia, 75. 52. Celeste Zenha, “O Brasil de Rugendas nas edições populares ilustradas,” Topoi (2002): 140. 53. Maurice Rugendas, Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil (Paris: Engelmann, 1835), “Mœurs et Usages des Indiens,” 3e division, 1er cahier, livraison no. 5, fols. 1–2. 54. Ibid., fol. 5. 55. The photographs are mentioned in the following catalogs: Atelier de M. Biard: Tableaux, études d’après nature, objets étrangers, armes, vases, costumes,

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meubles, etc. (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1865); Catalogue de tableaux par M. Biard (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1875); and Succession de M. Biard. About twenty engravers produced the engravings of Deux années au Brésil. Most of the engravings contain the signatures of both Biard and Riou and of one, two, or three engravers. On the production process of wood engraving, see Rémi Blachon, La gravure sur bois au XIXe siècle: L’âge du bois debout (Paris: Amateur, 2001). 56. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 72. 57. Ibid., 77. 58. Ibid., 133–34. 59. Ibid., 148. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 191. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 246. To describe a banana, Thevet used the analogy of a cucumber, stating that the fruit from “this tree we are talking about is the length of a foot, that is as long and as thick as a cucumber.” See Thevet, Le Brésil d’André Thevet, 137. 64. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 337–38. 65. Ibid., 317–18. 66. Claudia Andrade dos Santos, “Les voyageurs français et les débats autour de la fin de l’esclavage au Brésil (1850–1899)” (PhD dissertation, Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, 1999), 96. 67. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 338. 68. Ibid., 373. 69. Ibid., 368. 70. Ibid., 586. 71. Ibid., 313. 72. Ibid., 318. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 321. 75. Bourneuf and Ouellet, L’univers du roman, 107. 76. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 129. 77. Ibid., 160–61. 78. Ibid., 48. 79. Ibid., 49. 80. James Wetherell, Brazil: Stray Notes from Bahia; Being Extracts from Letters, etc., during a Residence of Fifteen Years (Liverpool, UK: Webb and Hunt, 1860), 47. 81. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 183. The Lapland episode is narrated in Biard’s short travel account; see François-Auguste Biard, “Entre Christiana et Drontheim,” Musée des familles, June 1841. 82. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 197. 83. Ibid.

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84. Léry and Lestringant, Histoire d’un voyage, 143. 85. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, Voyages dans l’intérieur du Brésil, vol. 2, Voyages dans le district des diamans et sur le litoral du Brésil (Paris: Libraire-Gide, 1833), 356. 86. Bourneuf and Ouellet, L’univers du roman, 159. 87. Ibid., 87. On the homodiegetic narrator, see Gérard Genette, Figures, vol. 3 (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 255–56. 88. Staden, Warhaftige Historia; Whitehead and Harbsmeier, Hans Staden’s True History. 89. Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (London: John Murray, 1863); Paul Marcoy (pseudonym of Laurent Saint-Cricq), Voyage de l’Océan Atlantique à l’Océan Pacifique, à travers l’Amérique du Sud (Paris: Hachette, 1869). Also illustrated by Édouard Riou, Marcoy’s travel account first appeared in Le Tour du monde in several issues between 1862 and 1867. The travelogue was also translated into English as Travels in South America from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1875). For a comparison of Biard’s and Marcoy’s travelogues, see Ana Lucia Araujo, “De la gravure à la photographie: Représentations et stéréotypes culturels de l’Amérique du Sud dans la revue Le Tour du monde (1860–1914),” in Enjeux interculturels des médias: Altérités, transferts et violences, ed. Michèle Garneau, Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, and Walter Moser (Ottawa, ON: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2011), 291–312. 90. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 115. 91. Ibid., 146. 92. Ibid., 149. 93. Ibid., 33–34. 94. Ibid., 160. 95. Ibid., 166. Unfortunately this painting has not yet been located. 96. Ibid., 631. 97. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 2008), 138. 98. Hugh Honour, Romanticism (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 23. 99. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 138.

Chapter 3 1. Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 99. On the depictions of the Brazilian enslaved population by European travelers, see Eneida Maria Mercadante Sela, Modos de ser, modos de ver: Viajantes europeus e escravos africanos no Rio de Janeiro (1808– 1850) (Campinas: Editora da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2008).

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2. Jeanine Potelet, Le Brésil, vu par les voyageurs et les marins français, 1816–1840: Témoignages et images (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991), 166. 3. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 134–35. 4. Ibid., 138. 5. Ibid., 136–38. 6. Quoted in Levy Rocha, Viagem de Pedro II ao Espírito Santo (Vitória: Arquivo Público do Espírito Santo, 2008), 169. 7. Rocha, Viajantes estrangeiros, 94; Rocha, Viagem de Pedro II ao Espírito Santo, 168–69. 8. Samuel Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 92; Matthew Restall and Kris E. Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 183. 9. On the association of the slave body with nudity among Brazilian academic artists, see Daryle Williams, “‘Peculiar Circumstances of the Land’: Artists and Models in Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Slave Society,” Art History 25, no. 4 (2012): 702–27. 10. Quoted in Silvia Hunold Lara, Fragmentos setecentistas: Escravidão, cultura e poder na América Portuguesa (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007), 14. 11. Manet left Le Havre on December 9, 1848, and returned to France on June 3, 1849. 12. Édouard Manet, Lettres du siège de Paris: Précédées des lettres du voyage à Rio de Janeiro (Paris: Éditions de l’Amateur, 1996), 23. 13. Ibid., 24. 14. Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 223. 15. Maria Odila Silva Dias, Power and Everyday Life: The Lives of Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 57. 16. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:91. 17. Thomas Ewbank, Life in Brazil: Or a Journal of a Visit to the Land of the Cocoa and the Palm (New York: Harpers and Brothers, 1856), 78. 18. Wetherell, Brazil, 72–73. 19. Ibid., 15. Previous travelers also report that slaves were barefooted but that “some of them are gaily dressed”; see Daniel P. Kidder and James C. Fletcher, Brazil and the Brazilians Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 1857), 26. 20. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 223. 21. Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 61. 22. Silvia Hunold Lara, “The Signs of Color: Women’s Dress and Racial Relations in

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Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, ca. 1750–1815,” Colonial Latin American Review 6, no. 2 (1997): 215; see also Dias, Power and Everyday Life, 59. 23. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 114. 24. Ibid., 38. 25. Ibid. 26. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 166. 27. Sandra Lauderdale Graham, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 49, 100, 105–6; Kathleen J. Higgins, “Licentious Liberty” in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-­ Century Sabará, Minas Gerais (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 38, 59; Mieko Nishida, Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender and Race in Salvador, Brazil, 1808–1888 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 19; Luiz Carlos Soares, O ‘povo de Cam’ na capital do Brasil: A escravidão urbana no Rio de Janeiro do século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2007), 110–11. 28. Alfred Russel Wallace, A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro with an Account of the Native Tribes and Observations of the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley (New York: Ward, Lock, 1889), 2. 29. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 336–37. 30. Ibid., 313. These “pale domestic servants” were poor white Portuguese individuals from the Atlantic islands (see chapter 2). 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 314. 33. Ibid., 420. 34. Ibid., 421. 35. On rice cultivation in the Amazonia region, see Wallace, A Narrative of Travels, 16–21; and Walter Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 36. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 338. 37. Ibid., 339. 38. Ibid., 350. 39. Ibid. 40. David Lemming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 72. 41. Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 201. 42. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 357. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 357–58. 45. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 224. Regarding filed teeth in other regions of the Americas, Jerome Handler explains that there is evidence that the practice was connected to African-born individuals; see Jerome S. Handler,

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“Determining African Birth from Skeletal Remains: A Note on Tooth Mutilation,” Historical Archaeology 8, no. 3 (1994): 114. 46. Rugendas, Voyage pittoresque, 2e div., 3e cahier, 10e livraison, 26; Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:114, plate 37. 47. Wetherell, Brazil, 135. 48. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 224. On the physical characteristics of runaway enslaved men and women in newspaper advertisements, see Márcia Amantino, “As condições físicas e de saúde dos escravos fugitivos anunciados no Jornal do Commercio (RJ) em 1850,” História, Ciências, Saúde—Manguinhos 14, no. 4 (2007): 1391. 49. Handler, “Determining African Birth from Skeletal Remains,” 113. 50. On Africans’ filed teeth in Brazil, see Andersen Líryo, Claudia Rodrigues Carvalho, Sheila Mendonça de Souza, and Diana Maul de Carvalho, “Modificações dentárias na primeira catedral do Brasil, Salvador, Bahia,” Antropologia portuguesa 18 (2001): 119–41; and Andersen Líryo, Claudia Rodrigues Carvalho, Sheila Mendonça de Souza, and Diana Maul de Carvalho, “Dentes intencionalmente modificados e etnicidade em cemitérios do Brasil Colônia e Império,” Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia 21 (2012): 1–18. 51. Andersen Líryo, “Bocas afiadas e enfeitadas escravos africanos espalham pelo Brasil a prática de modificar intencionalmente a forma dos dentes,” Revista de história, January 2, 2012, http://www.revistadehistoria.com.br/secao/artigosrevista/bocas-afiadas-e-enfeitadas. 52. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 51. 53. Ibid., 67–68. 54. Pano da costa was a heavy and striped kind of cloth imported from West Africa that was very popular among black women during the period of slavery in Brazil. On the ways of dressing of enslaved women in Brazil, see Lara, “The Signs of Color.” 55. Ewbank, Life in Brazil, 94. On the issue of regions of provenances see Mariza de Carvalho Soares, People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in EighteenthCentury Rio de Janeiro (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 16. On Mina, in particular, see Robin Law, “Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of ‘Mina’ (Again),” History in Africa 32 (2005): 247–67. 56. Wetherell, Brazil, 77. 57. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 90–93. 58. Margrit Prussat, Bilder der Sklaverei: Fotografien der Afrikanischen Diaspora in Brasilien, 1860–1920 (Berlin: Reimer, 2008), 208. 59. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 3: plate 27. 60. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 84. 61. Ibid., 86–87.

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209

62. Ibid., 87. 63. On the figure of the black dandy in London, especially the character Mungo Macaroni, see Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); and Catherine Molineux, Faces of Perfect Ebony: Encountering Atlantic Slavery in Imperial Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 64. Entrudo was the popular festival brought to Brazil by the Portuguese that preceded the present-day Carnival; see Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:103, plate 33; and Ewbank, Life in Brazil, 96, 101. Entrudo also occurred in other regions of Brazil, including Recife (Pernambuco); see Henry Koster, Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster in the Years from 1809 to 1815 (Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817), 332. 65. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 88. 66. Ibid., 97. 67. Ibid., 101. 68. Ibid., 79–80. 69. On the presence of black individuals in the National Guard, see Jeanne Berrance de Castro, “O negro na Guarda Nacional brasileira,” Anais do Museu Paulista 23 (1969): 149–72; and Jeanne Berrance de Castro, A milícia cidadã: A guarda nacional de 1831 a 1850 (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1977), 135–45. 70. Gustavo Barroso, Uniformes do exército brasileiro, 1730–1922 (Paris: F. Ferroud, 1922), 79. 71. Amédée-François Frézier, Relation du voyage de la mer du Sud aux côtes du Chili et du Pérou fait pendant les années 1712, 1713, et 1714, vol. 2 (Paris: J.-G. Nyon, E. Ganeau, J. Quillau, 1732), 533; Maria Graham, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil and Residence There, during Part of the Years 1821, 1822, and 1823 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824), 105, 137, 155; Robert Walsh, Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, vol. 2 (London: F. Westley and A. H. Davis, 1830), 323; Jean-Baptiste Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2: plate 23; Rugendas, Voyage pittoresque, 4e div., 1er cahier, 4e livraison, fol. 7. 72. Courrier du Brésil, March 22, 1857; see also Canelas, “Franceses ‘quarantehuitards’,” 141n71. 73. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 97–98. 74. Ibid., 64. 75. Traite d’esclaves dans la côte ouest de l’Afrique (Slave Trade on the West African Coast), Salon of 1835; Capture d’un bâtiment négrier par un navire français (Capture of a Slave Ship by a French Ship), Salon of 1846; and Proclamation de la liberté des Noirs aux colonies, 1848 (Proclamation of Black Emancipation in the Colonies, 1848), Salon of 1849. 76. The reproduction of the engraving based on the painting and published in

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L’illustration 37 (1861), 345, is available in Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr., eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas, http:// hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/. 77. Vente d’esclaves dans les États de l’Amérique du Sud is mentioned in the sale catalog of Biard’s studio, Atelier de M. Biard, but its current location is not mentioned. However, La chasse aux esclaves fugitifs, dated 1859, is part of the Coleção Sérgio Fadel, São Paulo, Brazil. 78. Alfred Nettement, “Salon de 1861,” La Semaine des familles, June 29, 1861. 79. Biard, Deux Années au Brésil, 98. 80. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:31. 81. Kidder and Fletcher, Brazil and the Brazilians, 37. 82. Biard, Deux Années au Brésil, 83–84. 83. A similar scene, titled A Brazilian Family, was also depicted by the British traveler Henry Chamberlain; see Henry Chamberlain and Rubens Borba de Moraes, Vistas e costumes da cidade e arredores do Rio de Janeiro em 1819–1820 (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Kosmos editora, 1943), 39. 84. Soares, O ‘povo de Cam’, 363. 85. On white women’s seclusion in Brazil, see Dias, Power and Everyday Life, 59. 86. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 2:31. 87. Ibid., 2:31–32. 88. Charles Expilly, Le Brésil tel qu’il est (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), 206. 89. Katia M. de Queirós Mattoso, Être esclave au Brésil, XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1979), 230–31. 90. Article 176 of Law No. 9 of May 13, 1835, prohibited African-born individuals from owning real estate; see Maria Inês Côrtes de Oliveira, “Viver e morrer no meio dos seus: Nações e comunidades africanas na Bahia do século XIX,” Revista USP 28, no. 95–96 (1997): 179n11; and Lisa Earl Castillo, “Between Memory, Myth, and History: Transatlantic Voyagers of the Casa Branca Temple,” in Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and Images, ed. Ana Lucia Araujo (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2011), 214. 91. Ana Lucia Araujo, “Les représentations de l’esclavage dans les gravures des relations Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil (1834) de Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768–1848) et Deux Années au Brésil (1862) de François-Auguste Biard (1799–1882),” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 59, no. 30 (2005): 161–83. 92. Negative comments by the monarchy and its supporters can be found in a report produced by the Instituto Histórico Geográfico Brasileiro in 1839; see Lima, Jean-Baptiste Debret, 160–68. On the reception of Debret’s work in the twentieth century, see Anderson Ricardo Trevisan, “Jean-Baptiste Debret e sua (re)descoberta na primeira metade do século XX no Brasil,” Resgate 20, no. 23 (2012): 18–27. On the “rediscovery” of Debret’s work starting in the 1930s, see

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211

Daryle Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 165–76. 93. Williams, “‘Peculiar Circumstances of the Land,’” 703. 94. “Folhetim do Jornal do comércio,” Jornal do comércio, July 19, 1882.

Chapter 4 1. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 175. 2. Saint-Hilaire, Voyages dans l’intérieur du Brésil, vol. 2. 3. Biard says his host had lived in Brazil for eight years and developed the trade of bois de palissandre (jacaranda); see Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 114. On Pietro Tabacchi, see Renzo M. Grosselli, Colônias imperiais na terra do café: Camponeses trentinos (vênetos e lombardos) nas florestas brasileiras; Espírito Santo 1874–1900 (Vitória: Arquivo Público do Estado do Espírito Santo, 2008), 170. 4. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 141. 5. Saint-Hilaire, who described this river, called it by a third name, Piraquiassú; see Saint-Hilaire, Voyages dans l’intérieur du Brésil, 2:352. 6. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 360. 7. Ibid., 378–81. 8. Ibid., 381. 9. Ibid., 479. 10. Ibid., 500. 11. Ibid., 545. 12. This language, also known as Brasílica, derived from the old Tupi language, which was the lingua franca of the Tupinambá along the Brazilian coast when the first Portuguese colonizers arrived in Brazil. Throughout the seventeenth century, as the language was assimilated by the Portuguese, it became known as the língua geral, from which two other languages were developed: the língua geral paulista (general language of São Paulo) and the língua geral amazônica (Amazonian general language). The latter was also known as Nheengatu, which is still spoken in the Amazonia today. 13. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 322. 14. Ibid., 343. 15. On September 5, 1850, Imperial Law No. 582 transformed the judicial district of the Alto Amazonas, situated in what was then the province of Grão-Pará, into the province of Amazonas. The province of Grão-Pará became the province of Pará. Manaus became the capital of Amazonas in 1856. 16. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 414. On local authorities serving as intermediaries between European travelers and Amazonia’s Natives, see Heather Flynn Roller, “River Guides, Geographical Informants and Colonial Field Agents in the Portuguese Amazon,” Colonial Latin American Review 21, no. 1 (2012): 101–26.

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17. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 433. 18. See Pratt, Imperial Eyes; Felix Driver and Luciana Martins, eds., “Views and Visions of the Tropical World,” in Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 3–20. 19. The work remained in the private market until 2004, when it was purchased by the Louvre Museum’s Department of Graphic Arts; see Pedro Corrêa do Lago and Louis Frank, O Conde de Clarac e a floresta virgem do Brasil (Paris: Louvre and Chandeigne, 2005), 14. An image of the Count of Clarac’s original drawing is available at http://www.chalcographiedulouvre.com/html/2b/selection/page_ notice-ok.php?Ident=D&NoticeId=577&myPos=1. 20. Jean Boghici, Missão artística francesa e pintores viajantes: França-Brasil no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Cultural Brasil-França, 1990), 104. 21. Vivien de Saint-Martin, “Sciences historiques: chronique,” Le Temps, April 22, 1862. 22. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 432. 23. Ibid., 203–4. 24. Ibid. 25. Wetherell, Brazil, 31. 26. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 428. 27. Ibid., 370. 28. The first edition was published in 1745. The edition used hereafter is CharlesMarie de La Condamine, Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’intérieur de l’Amérique méridionale: depuis la côte de la Mer du Sud, jusqu’aux côtes du Brésil et de la Guyane en descendant la rivière des Amazones (Maastricht, Netherlands: J.-E. Dufour & P. Roux, 1778), 76. 29. Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 16. 30. Ibid., 5–34. 31. See Défrichement d’une forêt in Rugendas, Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil, 4e division, plate 6. 32. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 212. 33. Ibid., 438. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 447. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 142. 38. Ibid., 651. 39. Ibid., 652. 40. Ibid., 469. On these administrators and how they intervened in the choice of guides for foreign travelers, see Roller, “River Guides,” 101–26. 41. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 470. 42. For example, several watercolors by William James, who visited Brazil in 1865,

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portray these canoes on the Amazon and its tributaries; see Maria Helena P. T. Machado, O Brasil no olhar de William James: Cartas, diários e desenhos (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2010). 43. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 476. 44. Ibid. 45. As Biard observed during his stay in Rio de Janeiro, the shako was part of the uniform of the National Guard; see chapter 3 and figure 3.9. 46. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 620. 47. Ibid., 577–78. 48. Ibid., 578. 49. La Condamine, Relation abrégée d’un voyage, 65–66. 50. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 280. 51. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 578. 52. Ibid., 219. 53. Ibid., 224. 54. Biard’s drawing Le souroucoucou is housed in a private collection in Rio de Janeiro and has been reproduced in Boghici, Missão artística francesa e pintores viajantes, 130. 55. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 492. 56. Ibid., 495. 57. Ibid., 275. 58. Ibid., 276. 59. Ibid., 276. 60. Marin, On Representation, 211. 61. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 216. 62. This was the list of passengers of the steamer Marajó, which sailed from Manaus to Belém; see “A Pedidos,” Gazeta official, November 6, 1859. 63. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 253. 64. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 346. 65. Candace Slater invokes Bates’s travelogue but fails to identify the earlier representations of the Amazon, including those in Deux années au Brésil, that probably inspired Bates; see Candace Slater, Entangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 40.

Chapter 5

1. Information was obtained especially from Prince Maximilian Wied-Neuwied, Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1815, 1816, 1817 (London: Henry Colburn, 1820); and Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1817–1820: Undertaken by Command of His Majesty the King of Bavaria (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824). 2. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 114.

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3. George Catlin, Therese Thau Heyman, George Gurney, and Brian W. Dippie, George Catlin and His Indian Gallery (Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2002). 4. Robert M. Lewis, “Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin’s Indian Gallery and the Shows of London,” European Journal of American Studies 1 (2008), document 6, http://ejas.revues.org/2263. 5. Bruce Watson, “George Catlin’s Obsession,” Smithsonian, December 2002, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/catlin.html. 6. George Catlin, North and South American Indians: Catalogue Descriptive and Instructive of Catlin’s Indian Cartoons; Portraits, Types, and Customs (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1871), 87; Machado, O Brasil no olhar, 27; Antonio Porro, “A Amazônia indígena de George Catlin: Images e relatos de viagem desconhecidos,” Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ciências Humanas 5, no. 3 (2010): 647–68. 7. Catlin, North and South American Indians. 8. George Catlin, Life Amongst the Indians (London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 1867). 9. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 114. 10. The Société d’Anthropologie de Paris (Society of Anthropology of Paris) was created in France in 1859; see Pierre-Jerôme Jehel, “Photographie et anthropologie en France au XIXe siècle” (DEA thesis, Université de Paris VIII, 1995), 24–28; and Jean-Claude Wartelle, “La Société d’Anthropologie de Paris de 1859 à 1920,” Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines 1, no. 10 (2004): 125–71. 11. A similar phenomenon occurred in the artist colony established in Taos, New Mexico, in the beginning of the twentieth century, when ethnic tourism started emerging; see Sylvia Rodriguez, “Art, Tourism, and Race Relations in Taos: Toward a Sociology of the Art Colony,” Journal of Anthropological Research 65, no. 1 (1989): 77. 12. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 202. 13. In the province of Pará, for example, Law No. 2 of April 25, 1838, established the Body of Workers (Corpo de Trabalhadores), “a form of recruitment of coercive labor that allowed the state to distribute a workforce according to its interests for public Works and services to private owners, . . . which existed until the 1870s”; see André F. Ramos, “A escravidão do indígena, entre mito e novas perspectivas de debates,” Revista de Estudos e Pesquisas 1, no. 1 (2004): 253. 14. Ibid., 256. 15. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 159. 16. Ibid., 548–51. 17. Ibid., 551–52. 18. Ibid., 540. 19. Ibid., 567–68.

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20. George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, Written during the Eight Years’ Travel amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America (London: Tosswill and Myers, 1841), 105. 21. Ibid., 106. 22. Ibid., 108. 23. On the idea of soul theft through image, see Stefan Andriopoulos, “The Terror of Reproduction: Early Cinema’s Ghostly Doubles and the Right of One’s Own Image,” New German Critique 33, no. 3–99 (2006): 157–58. 24. Machado, O Brasil no olhar, 39; Elizabeth Cary Agassiz and Louis Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868), 276–78. 25. Since the colonial period, mameluco and mameluca have been used by the Portuguese and white Brazilians to refer to individuals of mixed white European and Amerindian parentage. 26. Atelier de M. Biard, 11–12. 27. Ibid., 11, item 67. 28. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 225. 29. Jacques-Louis David, La douleur et les regrets d’Andromaque sur le corps d’Hector son mari, 1783, oil on canvas, 146.0 cm × 181.0 cm, Louvre Museum. 30. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 225–26. 31. Ibid., 254–55. 32. Ibid., 459. 33. Ibid., 458–59. 34. Ibid., 460. 35. Ibid. 36. Atelier de M. Biard, 100, item 51. 37. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 610. 38. Ibid., 610–11. 39. Young, Craving Earth, 91. 40. Atelier de M. Biard, 10, item 52. 41. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 611–12. 42. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 274–75. 43. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 348. 44. See, for example, Agassiz and Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil. On Louis Agassiz’s idea of how miscegenation and hybridism led to the degeneration of the races, see Machado, O Brasil no olhar, 62–63. On the idea of tropical degeneration, see Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 112. 45. Freyre, Casa-grande e senzala, 367. 46. Ibid., 368.

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47. La Condamine, Relation abrégée d’un voyage, 1778 edition, 108–9. 48. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 632–33. 49. Ibid., 359. 50. Ibid., 464–65. 51. Ibid., 475. 52. Ibid., 614–15. 53. Ibid., 244. 54. Ibid., 245. 55. Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique, 1:26. 56. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 245–46. 57. Atelier de M. Biard, 23, item 294. The four sketches depicting the Botocudo are Jeune garçon (Young Boy), Jeune femme (Young Woman), Autre femme (Another Woman), and Jeune guerrier (Young Warrior); ibid., 11. 58. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 546–47. 59. Carelli, À la découverte de l’Amazonie, 140. 60. This practice was no longer common among the Mundurucu in the 1950s, according to two anthropologists who did fieldwork among them then: “The men formerly shaved the front part of the head to the crown, allowing the hair in back to grow to the neck”; see Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy, Women of the Forest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 80. 61. Information provided by Leila Florence de Moraes, who lives in Brazil. She is Hercule Florence’s descendant and the owner of the Cyrillo Hércules Florence Collection. 62. The sketches listed are: Le grand chef (The Big Chief), Autre chef (Another Chief), Indien (Indian), Femme indienne (Indian Woman), Femme inspirée (Inspired Woman), Jeune garçon (Young Boy), Indien idiot (Idiot Indian), Indien (Indian), Jeune femme d’Abacachi (Young Woman from Abacaxi), Jeune femme dans son hamac (Young Woman in Her Hammock), Le devin ou page de la tribu (The Tribe’s Diviner or Page), Jeune guerrier (Young Warrior), Autre guerrier (Another Warrior), Vieille femme (Old Woman), and Vieille femme surnommée bouche-noire (Old Woman Nicknamed Black Mouth); Atelier de M. Biard, 10. 63. Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 79. 64. Robert F. Murphy, Mundurucú Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), 53. 65. Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 78. 66. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 547. A sketch titled Jeune Indien (Young Indian) is listed in the sale catalog of the painter’s studio; Atelier de M. Biard, 9. 67. The sketch Chef de tribu en costume (Tribal Chief in Costume) is listed in Atelier de M. Biard, 9. 68. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 548. 69. Ibid., 198.

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70. Ibid., 201. 71. The sketches Indien porteur de la figure de Saint Benoist (Indian Carrying the Image of Saint Benedict) and Le capitaine de la fête de Saint Benoist (The Captain of St. Benedict’s Festival) probably inspired the oil painting Cérémonie de la fête de Saint Benoît chez les Cabocles civilisés (Ceremony of Saint Benedict’s Festival among Civilized Caboclos), which was possibly the source for the woodcut; Atelier de M. Biard, 11. A caboclo is the child of mameluco parents. 72. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 198. 73. Ibid., 198, 201. 74. Ibid., 201. 75. The paintings are La Préparation du curare dans la forêt vierge du Brésil, 1859, oil on canvas, 80.0 cm × 100.0 cm, Musée du Nouveau Monde de La Rochelle, France, and Prière au soleil dans les forêts de l’Amazonie, ca. 1860, oil on canvas, 85.4 cm × 115.5 cm, Collection Brasiliana, São Paulo, Brazil. A Brazilian private collection houses an additional painting that is an idealized representation of the Mundurucu: Os Mundurucu às margens de um afluente do rio Madeira (The Mundurucu on the Banks of a Tributary of the Madeira River), ca. 1862, oil on canvas, 127.0 cm × 195.0 cm, Coleçao Zózimo Gomes da Costa, São Paulo. See also Carlos Martins and Valéria Piccoli, Paisagem e panoramas: 7 de marco a 13 de setembro de 2009; François Auguste Biard: O indígena e o olhar romantico: 15 de maio a 29 de agosto de 2010 (São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2010), 71. 76. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 573. 77. Rodriguez, “Art, Tourism, and Race Relations in Taos,” 81. 78. Most of these exhibitions occurred on the eve of the commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary of the “discovery” of Brazil by the Portuguese. These exhibitions included Brasil dos Viajantes, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, 1995; Mostra do Redescobrimento: Brasil + 500, Pavilhão da Oca, Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, 2000; François Auguste Biard: O indígena e o olhar romantico, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, 2010. 79. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 563. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. John George Wood, The Natural History of Man: Being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World, vol. 2 (Hartford, CT: J. B. Burr, 1876), 1219. 83. Ibid. 84. Murphy, Mundurucú Religion, 52–53. 85. Wetherell, Brazil, 48. 86. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 570. 87. Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 130. 88. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 607–8.

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89. In the sale catalog of Biard’s studio, the trumpet is listed as a grande trompe de guerre des Mondurucus (Mudurucu great war trumpet), and the flute he brought back is called a flûte faite d’un os (flute made of a bone); Atelier de M. Biard, 24. 90. Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 118. 91. Ibid., 119. 92. I also explore this topic elsewhere; see Ana Lucia Araujo, “Encontros difíceis: O artista-herói e os índios corrompidos no relato de viagem Deux Années au Brésil (1862),” Luso-Brazilian Review 42, no. 2 (2005): 15–39. 93. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 187. 94. Wetherell, Brazil, 19. 95. Biard, Deux années au Brésil, 188. 96. Ibid., 479. 97. Ibid., 481. 98. Ibid., 506. 99. Ibid., 519. 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid., 610. 102. Ibid., 635. 103. Ibid.

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Potelet, Jeanine. Le Brésil, vu par les voyageurs et les marins français, 1816–1840: Témoignages et images. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991. Prado, João Fernando de Almeida. O artista Debret e o Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1989. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 2008. Prussat, Margrit. Bilder der Sklaverei: Fotografien der Afrikanischen Diaspora in Brasilien, 1860–1920. Berlin: Reimer, 2008. Ramos, André F. “A escravidão do indígena, entre mito e novas perspectivas de debates.” Revista de Estudos e Pesquisas 1, no. 1 (2004): 241–65. Restall, Matthew, and Kris E. Lane. Latin America in Colonial Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Rocha, Levy. Viagem de Pedro II ao Espírito Santo (Vitória: Arquivo Público do Espírito Santo, 2008). ———. Viajantes estrangeiros no Espírito Santo. Brasília: Editora de Brasília, 1971. Rodriguez, Sylvia. “Art, Tourism, and Race Relations in Taos: Toward a Sociology of the Art Colony.” Journal of Anthropological Research 65, no. 1 (1989): 77–99. Roller, Heather Flynn. “River Guides, Geographical Informants and Colonial Field Agents in the Portuguese Amazon.” Colonial Latin American Review 21, no. 1 (2012): 101–26. Ross, Peter. “Don’t Trust the Locals: European Explorers in Amazonia.” In Literature and Travel, edited by Michael Hane, 93–109. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Santos, Claudia Andrade dos. “Les voyageurs français et les débats autour de la fin de l’esclavage au Brésil (1850–1899).” PhD dissertation, Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, 1999. Savant, Jean. La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo. Vol. 2, Madame Biard avant le scandale. Paris: J. Savant, 1982. ———. La vie sentimentale de Victor Hugo. Vol. 3, Du scandale au coup d’État et à l’agonie. Paris: J. Savant, 1982. Schultz, Kirsten. Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821. New York: Routledge, 2001. Schurr, Gérald. Le Guidargus de la peinture du XIXe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Les éditions de l’amateur, 1988. Schurr, Gérald, and Pierre Cabanne. Dictionnaire des petits maîtres de la peinture, 1820–1920. 2 vols. Paris: Éditions de l’Amateur, 1996. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. As barbas do imperador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998. ———. “Le complexe de Zé Carioca: Notes sur une certaine identité metises et malandra.” Lusotopie, 1997, 249–66. ———. “A Mestizo and Tropical Country: The Creation of the Official Image of Independent Brazil.” Revista Europea de Estudos Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 80 (2006): 25–42.

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Index

•

Abacaxis, 107 abolitionist: painter, 5, 15, 71, 100; movement, 26 Academy of Fine Arts (Rio de Janeiro), 29– 31, 42, 46, 100 adventure, viii, 11–12, 17, 61–62, 100, 104, 108, 122–23, 124, 129–30, 133, 136, 138 adventure novel(s), 3, 64, 69 adventurers, xxiii–xxiv, 2, 11, 32, 36, 64–65, 104, 107, 117, 136, 139, 186 African: born, 99, 210n90; descent, 78; enslavement, 15; exoticism, 71; groups, 86; origin, xxi; presence, 46; religions, 169;

Amazon River, xvi, 18, 32, 43, 59, 120, 132, 161, 164, 178, 181, 213n42 anthropophagy. See cannibalism Apiacá (Brazilian indigenous group), 44 Arago, Domonique-François-Jean, 43 Arapiranga Island, 81, 108 Arara (Brazilian indigenous group), ix, 59, 66, 107, 145, 164, 166–67 Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria, 40 Arctic, xxiv, 1, 8–10, 61, 68; expedition, 12–13, 21, 33, 120; landscapes, 112; travels, 62 Aumont, Altève, 20, 63, 198n97, 198n113 Aunet, Léonie d’, 8–9, 11–13, 16, 196n73

slaves, 39; tribes, 82; workforce, 68, 186 Africans, 36–37, 41, 49–50, 54, 68, 71, 83, 90– 91, 95, 188, 208n50 Afro-Brazilians, 49–50, 52, 54, 75, 87, 90–91; Afro-Brazilian women, 75, 78. See also black men; black women Agassiz, Elizabeth, 146 Agassiz, Louis, 146 Aimoré (Brazilian indigenous group). See Botocudo (Brazilian indigenous group) Almeida (Native model), xviii, 149–51 Amazonas (province), 18, 30, 43, 65, 106, 109, 142, 145, 186, 211n15 Amazonia, xv, xix, 1, 8, 17–18, 31, 41, 58–59, 66, 71, 79–80, 82, 100, 107–9, 115, 119, 122, 126, 129, 136–37, 143–46, 154, 156, 159, 164, 166, 178, 187, 191n2, 207n35, 211n12

aurora borealis, 10 Bahia (province), 17, 19, 20, 32, 38–39, 47, 71, 78, 83, 99 Barbosa, Paulo, 20, 63, 197n101 Barman, Roderick, 21, 24 Bates, Henry Walter, 64, 126, 136, 138 Belém (Pará), 18, 32, 44, 59, 79–80, 108, 143, 199n144, 213n62 Benoît (French servant) 63, 82, 105, 108 Berthoud, Samuel-Henry, 10–11, 13–14 Bhabha, Homi, 36, 193 bicho-do-pé (chigoe flea, or jigger), 105 black men, 76–77, 80–83, 85, 88–89, 99–100, 166–83, 186 black women, vii, 75–79, 85–86, 87, 108, 154, 158–59, 208n54 233

234

index

Boivin, Louis, 2, 3, 4, 10, 193n2 Bororo, 44 Botocudo (Brazilian indigenous group), ix, 8, 40, 47, 49, 51, 66, 143, 162–64, 203n45, 216n57 Boucher, François, 45

manners, 36; Mundurucu, ix, 155; Natives, 48, 144, 148, 184, 188; Natives barely civilized, 122; Rio de Janeiro, 39; world, 175 Cochet, Claude, 3, 193 Commission Scientifique du Nord (Scientific

Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), xxiv, 4 Bourbons, 27 Bragança, Francisca Carolina, (Princess), 7, 17, 20, 21 Brazilian monarchy, 17, 21–25, 42, 48, 68, 96, 99–101, 186, 198n112, 210n92 Brazilian Republic, 16

Commission of the North), 8 Copenhagen, 9, 37 Coroado (Brazilian indigenous group), 40 Countess of Barral, 20, 31, 63 Count of Clarac, xxv, 103, 109–11, 128, 137, 212n19 Count of Resende, 75 curare, xvi, 67, 170, 171, 217n75

Cabexi (Brazilian indigenous group), 44 caboclo (the child of mameluco parents), 217n71 Cabo São Roque, 32 cachaça, viii, 63, 67, 81, 113, 144–45, 151–53, 169 cafuzo (mixed black and Amerindian ancestry), 55, 79, 148, 149 cannibalism, 37, 63, 67, 156 Canomá, 107 caoueba (cauim), 62–63, 169 caricature(s), xvii, 5, 84, 86, 92, 96, 147, 159, 178; caricatured portrayals, 161, 164 Carnival. See Entrudo

Dahomey, Kingdom of, 82 David, Jacques-Louis, 2, 3, 4, 45, 150, 215n29 Debret, Jean-Baptiste, vii–viii, xix, xxi, xxiv–xv, 16, 29–30, 35, 42, 45–53, 55, 57, 77, 83, 87–89, 92, 96–100, 103, 110–11, 128, 137, 142–43, 162–64, 184, 187–88, 196n81, 203n36, 206 Denis, Jean-Ferdinand, 43 Denmark, 9, 37 Dom João Carlos de Bragança (Prince Regent), 21, 39, 40, 42, 46, 110, 163, 164, 200n8, 201n15

cartoon, 123, 188 Catholic Church, 75, 169 Catlin, George, 142–43, 145–46 Ceará (province), 32 Chamakoko (Brazilian indigenous group), 44 Chapon, Léon, 27 Chateaubriand, François-René, 13 Chinawezi (serpent), 82 Christiania (Oslo), 9, 11 Chopin, Frédéric, 14 Cicarelli, Alessandro, 21 civilization: as opposed to nature, 24; as opposed to savagery, 175; European, xix, 58; flourishing, 41; French, 105; Natives corrupted by, 141; Western, 184; white, xx, 69, 143, 155 civilized: Botocudo, 163; Europe, 116; European man, 182; France, xxiii;

Dom João VI. See Dom João Carlos de Bragança (Prince Regent) Dom Pedro I (Emperor), 17, 21, 40, 43, 46 Dom Pedro II (Emperor), xv, 1, 21, 24–26, 30, 46, 63, 74, 91, 100 Dona Francisca. See Francisca Carolina de Bragança (Princess) Dona Januária (Princess), 21 Dona Maria da Glória (Princess), 21 Dona Maria I (Queen of Portugal), 39, 42, 201n15 Dona Teresa Cristina (Empress), 27–28, 63 Duke of Enghien, 110 Duke of Luxembourg, 110 Duke of Orleans. See King Louis Philippe (King of the French) Dumont, Pierre-Louis, 167, 174 Dutch occupation of Pernambuco, 37

index

235

Eckhout, Albert, 37 Ender, Thomas, 40 Entrudo, 89, 209n64 Espírito Santo, xv, 1, 17, 20, 31, 54, 60–61, 65– 66, 71–72, 75, 104, 111, 113, 116–17, 119, 127, 130, 135–37, 142–44, 148, 151, 154, 162, 166,

First Empire, 46 Florence, Hercule, xix, 35, 44, 164, 216n61 flutes, 172–73 Forbin, Louis-Nicolas-Philippe-Auguste de (Count of Forbin), 3–4, 6, 103n5 Francisca Carolina de Bragança (Princess),

175, 186–87 Etherington, Alfred, 120, 121, 147, 170 ethnographer, xxiii, 1, 30, 36, 64, 66, 69, 126, 139, 146, 186 Eugène, Charles, 73, 74, 154 European: artists xix, xxi–xxii, xxiv–xxv, 35, 37, 72, 100, 103, 111, 141–42, 185; colonizers, 69, 83; fashion, 20, 84–85; immigrants, 90, 91, 96, 105, 144, 186; immigration, 17; naturalists, 47; painters, 33; romanticism, xxiv–xxv, 35, 69, 114, 150; scientists, 47; tradition, 62, 156, 185; travel accounts, xxv, 36, 71, 75, 137, 185; travelers, xviii, xx, xxiv, 35, 37, 44, 54–55, 62, 68, 75, 77–79, 85, 86, 89, 97, 122, 139, 143, 162, 177, 186, 188, 205n1, 211n16; travelogues, xi, xx, xxv, 36, 45, 48– 49, 76, 91, 126, 128, 137 Europeans, xx, xxvi, 20, 36–37, 49–50, 67–68, 76, 141, 148, 185, 188 Evreux, Yves d’, 38 exotic: animals, 55, 81; destination, 17; ele-

7, 17, 20, 21 Frézier, Amédéee-François, 92 French artistic mission, 16, 20, 29, 41–43, 45– 46, 197n99 French Guiana, 110 French Navy, 4–6, 9, 32, 49 Friedrich, Caspar David, 112

ment, 26; environment, 19; features, 68; fauna, xix, 105; flora, 111; human types, 152; landscapes, xvi, 18; natural setting, 109; objects, 106; populations, xxvi, 8, 126, 141; products, 54; society, xxi; subjects, 32; world, xviii, 53, 63, 127, 135 exoticism, xix, xxiv, 1–2, 5, 15, 54, 61, 63, 71, 75, 78, 105, 107, 185–86 Expilly, Charles, xix

House of the Two Sicilies, 26 Huber, Victor-Aimé, 51 Hugo, Victor, 12–14, 52, 142 Humboldt, Alexander von, 9, 16, 42, 109, 110, 142, 156, 200n3

Fagnion, Jules, 92 fazenda (plantation), 81, 108 Fazenda Mandioca, 43 Ferrez, Marc, 42 Ferrez, Zéphiryn, 42 Ferule, 8 Fine Arts Academy of Paris, 45, 110 Finland, 9

Gama, Caetano Maria Lopes (Viscount of Manguarape), 24, 198n112 Gauchard, Félix-Jean, 84, 85, 113, 117, 124, 125, 127, 128, 179 Giroux, Alphonse, 4 Graham, Maria, 92 Guanabara Bay, 17, 100 Gusmand, Adolphe, 93, 129, 180 Habsburgs, 27 Hamelin, Fortunée, 13 Hammerfest, 9 Hiélan, Oulie, 11

Ibiraçu, 104 Imperial Palace (Paço Imperial), 21–24, 63, 65 Industrial Revolution, 38 Institute of Fine Arts (Paris), 110 Institute of France, 42 Isabel, Princess, 21, 24 Julião, Carlos, 38 July Monarchy (1830–1848), xv, xxiv, 1, 6, 7, 15, 16, 30, 33, 95, 100 Juruena River, 44

236

index

Karasch, Mary, 76, 83 Kidder, Daniel, xix, 96 King Louis Philippe (King of the French), 6–7, 9, 13, 15, 26, 33, 120, 142, 195n39 Koster, Henry, xix

Martius, Karl Friedrich Philip von, xix, xxiv, 35, 40–41, 44, 48, 51–52, 184 Mato Grosso do Sul, 43 Maués, 107, 155 Maurand, Charles, 25, 56, 97, 123, 153, 163, 177, 181 Mawe (Brazilian indigenous group), 107, 143,

La Bayadère (corvette), 4 La Condamine, Charles Marie de, xix, 38, 44, 114, 126, 159 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 14, 15 Langsdorff, Grigory, 43 Langsdorff expedition, 43–45, 50, 164 Lapland, 9, 62, 204n81 La Recherche (corvette), 8–9 Lebreton, Joachim, 42, 46 Leopoldina, Princess, 21, 24 Léry, Jean de, xviii, 36, 54, 62, 63, 150, 156, 188 Le Tour du monde, xvi, 33, 52, 205n89 língua geral amazônica, 107, 211n12 Lottin, Victor-Charles, 9 Louvre Museum, 4, 110, 142, 212n19, 215n29 Lyon, 2–5, 106, 193n3

155 Meirelles, Victor, 28 Ménétriès, Edouard, 43 mestizo, 55 Miguel (Native domestic servant), 121, 159, 182–83 Minas Gerais, 43, 47, 49 mixed: populations, 35, 68; society, 75 mixed-race: men, xxvi; women, xxvi, 76, 152, 157, 178; individuals, 79 modernity, 58, 141, 143, 148 monarchical society, 60, 69 Mondrian, Piet, 116 mucama, 98–99 mulatto, 55, 79, 96, 99, 148; mulatto women (mulattas, mulâttresse), ix, 75–77, 79, 98, 99, 148–49, 152, 157–58, 159 Mundurucu (Brazilian indigenous group), ix, 8, 66, 107, 124, 108, 125, 145–46, 154–55, 164–66, 170–71, 174–75, 216n60, 217n75 Murá (Brazilian indigenous group), 40, 58–

Machado, Maria Helena P. T., 146 Macro-Jê, 47, 49 Madeira Islands, 17, 18 Madeira River, 44, 106–7, 145, 155, 166, 170, 217n75 Malê Rebellion of 1835, 99 mameluca (woman of Amerindian and European ancestry), 55, 108, 148, 149, 215n25 mameluco (man of Amerindian and European ancestry), 149, 215n25, 217 Mamoré River, 43 Manaus, 18, 32, 80–81, 109, 122, 153, 155, 157, 161, 198n130, 211n15, 213n62 Manet, Édouard, 76–78, 206n11 Marajó (steamer), 32, 199n144, 213n62 Marajó Island, 32, 81, 108 Maranhão, 18, 94, 186, 199n141 Marcoy, Paul (Laurent Saint-Cricq), 64 Marie, Pierre-Joseph, 73, 74 Marmier, Xavier, 9

59, 63, 80, 105, 145, 159 Murphy, Robert, 165–66, 173–75, 216n60 Murphy, Yolanda, 165, 174–75, 216n60 Musée du Luxembourg, 4, 6, 194n15 Museum Charles X, 4 Museum of French History of the Palace of Versailles, 7 Museum of Natural History of Paris, 10 Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro), 23, 44, 191n7 Napoleonic Wars, 38, 41 Nassau-Siegen, Johan Maurits van, 37 National Guard, vii, 91–92, 122, 209, 213n45 National School of Ponts et Chaussées, 45 natural history, 40, 48, 65–66, 109, 112, 136, 143 naturalist, xxiii, xxv, 9, 16, 36, 64, 66, 69, 79, 104, 126, 136, 138–39, 172, 186, 199n144

index

237

Nazaré, 55, 81 neoclassical: painter, 2; style, 42; aesthetics, 48; painting, 150 neoclassicism, 49 Nieuhof, Johannes, 38 Nossa Senhora da Penha, 74

Puri (Brazilian indigenous group), 40

Nova Almeida, 63

55, 64–65, 68–69, 78, 82, 103–4, 107, 109– 12, 114, 116, 118, 124, 128, 133, 135, 137, 177, 187–88, 194n29 rationalism, xxiv, 35 rationality, xxiv, 35 Recife (Pernambuco), 17–18, 32, 92, 209n64 Redingote, 80, 85 Révoil, Pierre-Henri, 2, 4 Revolution of 1848, xxiv, 1, 15 Richard, Fleury-François, 3–4, 200, 220, 224 Riedel, Ludwig, 43–44 Rio Grande do Sul (province), 46, 55 Riou, Édouard, xvi, 52, 74, 81, 86, 89, 92, 115, 117, 121, 123–25, 129, 131–32, 134, 137, 147, 154, 160, 162, 170–71, 174, 179–81, 183, 205n89 Robert, Eugène, 9 romantic painting, xvi, 150 Rondônia, 43 Rousseau, Henri, 135 Royal Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg, 43

Óbidos, 32, 143 Onças Island, 108 Orientalism, xix, 141, 185 Orientalist: orientation, 32; romanticism, 103; romantic paintings, xx; themes, xvi Orléans, François-Ferdinand d’ (Prince de Joinville), 7, 16 Orléans, Louis-Philippe d’. See King Louis Philippe (King of the French) Paiva, Maria Eugênia Lopes de (Mariquinha Guedes), 24, 198n113 pano da costa, 85, 87, 208n54 Pará (province), vi, 28, 30, 32, 43–44, 55–56, 58–59, 79–82, 94, 107–9, 142–43, 145, 183, 186, 199n144, 211n15, 214n13 Paraíba, 18, 61 Paraná (steamer), 31–32, 94, 199n141 Pernambuco, 17–18, 32, 37, 209 Petrópolis Palace, 21 Pettrich, Ferdinand, 21 photography, xxii, 44, 65, 112, 122, 137, 143, 145–46, 152, 165, 187 Phylis (Native model), vii, 152–54 Pierdon, François, 115, 171 Piraquê-açu River (also Piquiassú, Piraquiassú, Sanguaçu, Sangouassou) viii, 105, 119–20, 211n5 Place Vendôme, 6–7, 12–13, 16 Polycarpe (Murá guide), viii, ix, 58–59, 63, 80, 106, 108–9, 118–19, 122, 145–47, 159–61, 178–83 Post, Frans, 37 Pradier, Charles-Simon, 16, 42 Pradier, James, 13–14, 16, 196n61 Prainha, 32 Pratt, Mary Louise, 67, 109

Quaglio, Lorenzo, 50 Quartley, John, 165 rain forest, xvi, xviii–xix, xxv, 17, 19, 23, 51,

Royal School of Fine Arts of Lyon, 2–4, 193n3 Rubstov, Nester, 43–44 Rugendas, Johann Moritz (or Maurice Rugendas), xix, xxi, xxiv–xv, 16, 35, 43– 45, 50–53, 57, 83, 92, 103, 111, 115, 128, 137, 142–43, 162, 184, 188, 196n81 Sahara Desert, 5–6 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 14 Saint-Hilaire, Auguste, 43, 63, 104, 110 Salon, 2–3, 5–8, 14–15, 24, 32, 45, 46, 52, 95– 96, 110–11 Salvador (Bahia), 17, 19, 32, 38–39, 71, 75, 78, 92, 187 Santa Catarina, 43, 46 Santarém, 32, 44, 143 São Benedito (Saint Benedict), 62, 66, 166 São Cristóvão Palace, 21, 24, 26, 28, 142

238

index

São Luís of Maranhão, 32 sappers, 91 satire, xxv, 72, 100 savage: animals, 51; appearance, 83; Brazil, xxiii, 116; Brazilian life, 105; Brazilian natural environment, 117; eyes, 156; good,

Tocantins River, 59 travel writing, xviii, 33; travel-writing tradition, 53, 159 Treaty of Alliance and Friendship, 39 Treaty of Navigation and Commerce, 39 Trichon, Jean-François-Auguste, 27, 81, 94, 157

184; Native populations, 41, 47, 52, 141, 143, 145, 155, 161–62; noble, 188; ocelots, 130; world, 175, 182 savages, xxvi, 49, 51, 122, 162; Botocudo, 162 Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz, 25, 26, 40 Second Empire, 31 Serpa, 32 Seven Years’ War, 38 shako (military hat), 88, 91, 122, 179, 181, 213n45 shoe(s), 26, 55, 76–78, 85 simoon (desert wind), 5 slavery, xxi, xxv, 15, 45, 58, 71, 76, 90–91, 95– 96, 99–101, 186, 208n54 slave trade, 5, 15, 38–39, 41, 71, 83, 94–95, 144, 186 Sociedade dos Amigos das Bellas Artes (Society of Friends of Fine Arts), 29 Spitsbergen, 9, 12, 14 Spix, Johann Baptist von, xix, xxiv, 35, 40, 43–44, 48, 51–52, 162, 184, 209n75

Trondheim, 9, 11–12 tropical degeneration, 158, 215n44 tropical romanticism, xix, xxiii–xxvi, 33, 35– 36, 64, 68–69, 103–4, 116, 126–27, 133, 137, 141, 158, 175, 183–85, 187 Tupi-Guarani, 145 Tupi language, 47, 63, 211n12; Tupi speakers, 55, 173 Tupinambá (Brazilian indigenous group), 37, 47, 62–64, 150, 156, 211n12 Tyne (steamer), 17–19, 22, 32, 66, 197n85

Stepan, Nancy Leys, xv, xix stereotypes, 36–37, 88, 89, 126, 141; cultural xviii, xx, xxiii, xxv–xxvi, 72, 137, 186; derogatory, 58, 68, 185; racial, 76 Sweden, 9

Wattier, Édouard, 10 West Africa, 82, 87, 208n54 West Central Africa, 82–83 western Europe, xxiv, 2 Wetherell, James, xix, 61, 77, 83, 86, 114, 162, 177 wet nurse, 98–99 Wied-Neuwied, Prince Maximilian, xix, xxiv, 35, 47–48, 52, 110, 203n45, 213n1 Wood, John George, ix, 136, 138, 172–73

Tabacchi, Pietro, 104–5 Tambour, 172 Tapajós River, 32, 44, 155 Taunay, Adrien-Aimé (painter), 43–44 Taunay, Auguste-Marie (sculptor), 42 Taunay, Félix-Émile (painter), 42 Taunay, Nicolas-Antoine (painter), 29, 42, 110 Taunay, Théodore (French consul), 17, 20, 30, 63, 108 Tenerife (Canary Islands), 17–18 Teresa Cristina (Empress), 27–28, 63 Thorwaldsen, Karl Albert Bertel, 9

United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve, 39 Vila Bela (present-day Parintins), 32, 66, 107, 161 Viscount of Maranguape. See Gama, Caetano Maria Lopes (Viscount of Manguarape) War of the Spanish Succession, 38

Xingu (Brazilian indigenous group), 143 Yameo (Brazilian indigenous group), 126 Yucatán, 74 Zarari (Native man), 125–27 Zeferino (guard), 122, 79

6.7813 × 10.5  SPINE: 0.9063  FLAPS: 0

history 

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l ati n a m er ica

•

“meticulously r esearched and comparative in scope, Brazil through French Eyes captures a nineteenth-century French traveler’s colorful interpretations of Brazil through an astute cultural lens. Biard left a comfortable life and established career at age sixty to travel to Brazil, where he remained for two years, mostly in the wilds of Espírito Santo and the tropical forest of the Amazon. In addition to offering an accomplished and engrossing biographical rendering of Biard and his Deux années au Brésil, it also presents a sweeping history of a genre—the illustrated literature of South American travel—and of its rich historical period. Araujo successfully frames her arguments around the French notion of tropical romanticism. In Araujo’s capable hands, Romantisme Tropical reaches beyond Europe’s fascination with the exotic in the nineteenth century into subsequent time periods, stretching all the way to the present by way of links to other visual media, including photography and film.” —m arguer ite har r ison, Smith College

a r aujo

Brazil through French Eyes a ninet eent h - c entury a r t is t in t h e t ropic s

Brazil through French Eyes

In 1858 François-Auguste Biard, a well-known sixty-year-old French artist, arrived in Brazil to explore and depict its jungles and the people who lived there. What did he see and how did he see it? In this book historian Ana Lucia Araujo examines Biard’s Brazil with special attention to what she calls his “tropical romanticism”: a vision of the country with an emphasis on the exotic. Biard was not only one of the first European artists to encounter and depict native Brazilians but also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants. His 1862 travelogue Deux années au Brésil includes 180 woodcuts illustrating daily life in Brazil. In addition to revealing Brazil’s reliance on slave labor, Biard also describes the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. His work has been largely overlooked both by historians and art historians, and Araujo’s study will establish him on the cultural map of Brazil.

a na lucia ar aujo is a professor of history at Howard University. Her most recent book is Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery. She is also the author of Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic.

ana lucia araujo

isbn 978-0-8263-3745-0 90000

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