The traveller and the Brazilian landscape.

Abstract. Drawing on British and other landscape painting, as well as the travel writings of such people as Mary Graham, governess to the Emperor D. Pedro's daughter, this article examines representations of Brazil by Europeans in the early nineteenth century. It finds that the images created were not a neutral reflection of the exotic, but a complex reception based upon a wide variety of prior influences, amongst them the tradition of the grand tour, the Arcadian ideal, the concept of the picturesque, and scientific theories of Nature, such as Humboldt's. Nevertheless, the encounter with Brazil involved a true exchange of ideas, not only bringing European tastes such as the country garden to Brazil, but also taking back to Europe new images of the tropics, making this, as the author calls it, a 'two-way street'.

Keywords. Brazil; European art; landscape painting; travel writing; Nature; picturesque

Resumo. Baseando-se no paisagismo britanico e europeu, assim como nos livros de viagens de personagens tais como Mary Graham, preceptora da filha de D. Pedro, este artigo examina representacoes do Brasil feitas durante a primeira metade do seculo XIX. Conclui que as imagens formuladas nao representavam uma reflexao neutra do exotico, mas antes uma recepcao complexa, fundada sobre uma grande variedade de influencias previas, entre elas o grand tour, o ideal arcadiano, o conceito do pitoresco, e as teorias cientificas da Natureza, tais como as de Humboldt. Mesmo assim, o encontro com o Brasil implicava uma troca de ideias, que trazia os gostos europeus, tal como o jardim rustico, ao Brasil, mas que levava tambem para a Europa novas imagens dos tropicos. Tornou-se assim, como aponta a autora, uma 'rua em dois sentidos'.

Palavras-Chave. Brasil; arte europeia; pintura paisagista; livros de viagens; Natureza; pitoresco

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In these brief considerations on the Brazilian landscape and the gaze of the traveller, I shall point out some central issues for studies and researches on visual images, built upon universal language, but only apparently understandable.

It is necessary, initially, to question the very notion of landscape and ask how a simple piece of territory takes on the meaning of a visible landscape unit. And avoiding any a priori definition, it is preferable to ask what can be exhibited from nineteenth-century Brazil and which appreciative models would have enabled travellers to pick out the noticeable world and configure what has become known as landscape. Or in effect, how certain forms of appreciation of the world of nineteenth-century Europe have confronted the stimuli of topography, geography, vegetation and human life in Brazil.

Instead of demarcating an a priori notion of landscape, it seems advantageous to start from a wider understanding of the existing world, taken as a space created by the combined forces of nature, man, and time. And to note that the existing scenery is always a result of various actions and can be perceived in different lights. In dialogue with the existing landscape, some contemplate the action of natural forces; others confer meaning on the image of the city; others, again, size up the world transformed by man: the cultivated field, the strokes which put man in communication, the capacity to build, the conservation of forests, or the simulation of nature by the arranging of a mere garden.

In dealing with the traveller's contemplation, I presume that different perspectives make up the image of a place for a native or for a foreigner. (Incidentally, I quote the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who said: 'the river of my village makes me think of nothing ...' (1)) Here I dwell on the historical perception of the travellers; the meaning attributed by the inhabitants to the landscape would require a further digression. For now, I maintain simply that the landscape revisited by the inhabitant has the power to conjure up a journey in time, a trip through the memory and even a visit to childhood.

I point out the fundamental role of distance in the perception of the traveller, highlighting the dual aspect of the estranging of the subject. First, his distance from that which he perceives as extraordinary in the foreign place. Second, the distance provided by the journey in relation to what he experienced in his native land, which leads him to re-evaluate aspects of his ordinary life, giving them a new scope. In other words, I would say that the foreign traveller's displacement is a two-way street, giving cause for oriented comparisons in at least two ways. The changes of the usual circumstances constitute, ultimately, changes in the point of view, so it can then be said that the awareness of the relativity of cultures has been one of the main lessons brought about by the journey. Thus, the gaze cast by the observer upon a different space does not relate to the traditional meaning attributed to the exotic object, or the object which comes from abroad--just as the look cast upon a different time does not capture solely primitive ways, coming from an earlier moment.

On this hypothesis, that which is strange does not necessarily lead the foreigner to obliviousness of the self. It really seems he does not leave himself, nor does he allow himself to marvel at the exotic and picturesque. He becomes able, in the best of events, to see with new eyes. Walter Benjamin is right when he insists that 'the journey does not lead to absolute alterity, but leads back to the time when the ordinary was not yet such', provoking the experience of 'seeing for the first time', or as he puts it, to the experience of the 'never previously experienced'. Benjamin examined images of the city made in the twentieth century and concluded that the journey to a distant point worked in a similar way to the subject's incursion into the past. He thought that both the distant in space and the distant in time opened up possibilities for the reconstitution of the subject. (2)

Another important question therefore arises concerning the ways in which different cultures perceive one another. To examine the gaze cast by the European traveller on the American continent, I shall focus on the period in the early nineteenth century when the Portuguese colony of Brazil was on the way to becoming a Kingdom, when European eyes witnessed the birth of an empire in the tropics. This was a moment in which political life and European conscience were also being affected by great transformations, and Europe did not adopt a single stance on the appearance of the new nation state. As we know, the opening of the Brazilian ports was a measure forced on D. Joao VI by the British, who had assisted with the Portuguese royal family's removal to Rio (1808); having authorization to enter the colony, they were the first to set foot in the Kingdom. British presence was numerous in Brazil up to the return of D. Joao VI to Portugal (1821), when its imperial power entered into decline.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, after the move of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil and the opening of the Brazilian ports to international trade, European travellers came in ever greater numbers, lured by the immense unknown territory. Only then did the country acquire visibility, having been for three centuries a secret of the Portuguese, for the sake of defending the natural riches of the colony. Merchant vessels and round-the-world missions that had previously reached the coast of Portuguese America gained little knowledge of the great territory, which would remain the subject of projections and expectations, so often present in travellers' accounts and images after the discovery of the New World. The travellers who reached Brazil in the early decades of the nineteenth century carried with them images and opinions which had been current in Europe, and could size them up against the facts of experience.

The practice of the journey appears, justifiably, associated to the gaining of knowledge based on direct observation of the world, but one would have to discuss to what extent different generations of artists and scientists who came to Brazil were able to benefit from the immediate presence of what they perceived, and in what sense they could trust their sensible grasp of the world.

In general, there is no doubt that the landscape belongs to the senses. It is constructed by someone observing it and translating it. It can be painted without having even been thought. One condition for our study is the presence of the foreign traveller, identifying the Brazilian landscape from the baggage he carries, drawing approximations based on cultural traditions and his own training. He has interpreted the unknown country by means of a cartographic model, and admired it, evoking literary memories. The traveller may be able to read the morphology of the territory, or he may be more inclined to place the scenery observed into a historical perspective. He could observe the vegetation by a method of scientific classification, and enter it with an adventurous spirit, or dedicate himself to a pleasant sentimental journey, brought on by his aesthetic education. Would he be led to register customs through diplomatic motivations, or would the observations be driven by commercial interests? I believe that these examples are sufficient to show the complexity involved in the study of the travellers' images, which represent a notable advance in the knowledge of the country--a legacy built up in the nineteenth century by different international traditions.

Some scientists analysed the vegetable morphology and classified the native species, universalizing them through the language of natural history, according to the Linnaean taxonomic method. We can see this, for example, in the depictions of Brazilian plants made during the voyage of Captain Cook by Sydney Parkinson, assistant to Joseph Banks, for the Bank's Florilegium [iconographic reference 1]. The new German science, meanwhile, reassessed the natural system and sought to learn its tropical aspect, produced by the interdependence of countless environmental factors, as we can note in Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius's view of the San Francisco River, made during his Brazilian expedition with fellow naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix, in 1817-20 [icon. 2]. By contrast, other travellers circulated images of the country based simply on aesthetic and cultural standards of taste. (3) I think it cannot be denied that 'savage places' or 'wild places' are as much products of culture, made from desires, as any other imagined 'garden'. The landscape of the nineteenth century cannot be reduced to a naturalist key. It depends on models of interpretation, which provide it with an image.

When Europe opened its eyes to the New World, many of the Europeans who came to Brazil already had sketched out in their minds representations based on ancient civilizations. The practice of the journey was an element of the aristocratic upbringing of the young English from the beginning of the seventeenth century, which would take them on a grand tour of the continent, to wit, the 'birth of civilization', Rome, and the Alps. The journey to Italy had become the dream of every humanist in search of traces of classical civilization, and satisfied the thirst for an ideal artistic culture. The comparison between the journey to Italy and the journey to Brazil is revealing. Even the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, when he came to the Americas with the botanist, Aime Bonpland, had in mind the model of the journey to Italy, and was searching for great pre-Colombian civilizations.

The frame through which the Europeans perceived the Brazilian landscape, then, was not uncommonly the model of the journey to Italy. For example, William Alexander's original watercolour of Rio de Janeiro in 1792, made en route to Cochinchina, was reproduced in many printed versions that circulated in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The artist, a member of the Royal Academy, had selected the Carioca (Arcos da Lapa) aqueduct, lending relevance to human engineering and to the symbols of civilization and progress [icon. 3].

The presence of the English, after the Portuguese court arrived, was due to diplomatic interests favouring the independence of Brazil. And if sometimes it counted on drawings made by professional artists, most notes and visual registers were made by amateurs. To see and to draw was as important a part of the English education as it was to travel. To draw sketches in albums and record impressions in watercolours aided the fame of well-born officers. I am referring to their special education of the eyes, and the skill of the hands. And I ask how they were able to open their eyes and see the new country. These dilettante artists, who sketched for pleasure and not as work, brought images of Brazil within the horizons of the English public, presenting them at exhibitions or publishing them as prints, which appeared in albums and travel books. One should keep in mind here that many of these images were only later compiled for publication.

Many of these editions were part of the culture of the traveller and deserve to be studied in relation to other genres of travel literature. They selected places that could be frequented by visitors, thus providing them with the pleasure of recognition. The illustrated editions that proposed an itinerary, in the narrative axis, served the purpose of orienting visitors--or failing that, they excited the reader with imaginary journeys. They aimed to construct values of landscape, and strove to visually define local particularities, not only basing themselves on existing conventional criteria but establishing new criteria for presentational conventions, preserved to this day in postcards. Certain favoured places were repeatedly shown, echoed in different drawings made by authors of different origins. We see this, for example, in the case of the small Brazilian churches raised on hills, such as the Gloria Church in Rio de Janeiro, which would not pass unnoticed to the eyes of any traveller. (4)

Let us see some drawings made by William Gore Ouseley, when he resided in Brazil as Her Majesty's Charge d'Affaires. The son of an orientalist, Ouseley was a man of an extensive classical culture. He had studied in Paris and in Leyden, and travelled through many countries (including Sweden and the United States of America) before coming to Brazil. His views were recorded between 1823 and 1833, but he stayed in Brazil until the end of the first half of the century. On his return to Europe he published his Views in South America from original drawings made in Brazil, the River Plate, the Parana etc, an album with 25 lithographs in colour, selected by Queen Victoria, of which twenty came from Brazil [icon 4].

Ouseley's aeuvre provides enlightenment on the characteristics of the picturesque excursion practised by British visitors to Brazil. The term picturesque commonly denotes such objects as are proper subjects for painting; hence we can study the kind of scenery whose aesthetic is validated by painting. (5) In style with picturesque taste, the eyes sought relations that revealed Nature as fit to be appreciated or drawn, according to Arcadian poetic standards. The observer picked privileged angles to record Nature, true to values consecrated by painting and poetry. Pictorial tradition dictated norms to Nature and only some notable combinations of Nature ever reached the status of material adequate to art. Poetic images incorporated into the picturesque landscape had endowed the artists with a repertoire of conventional elements--for example, 'the gentle hills of humanists, where herds grazed, and cool and refreshing zephyrs blew.' The noble English manners acclaimed the native beauties by invoking idealized foreign models--such as Roman pastoral poetry, of which one of the prototypes was Virgil's Eclogues. In the early nineteenth century the Brazilian landscape was filtered by Arcadian ideals, first utopian, then melancholic.

Two views, Victoria Hill and Cemetery, and Ruined Chapel of San Goncalo, were taken by Ouseley from the coast of Bahia, as he was walking in the neighbourhood of Salvador. The English appreciated places that were sufficiently elevated to benefit from the sea breeze, avoiding the extreme heat of the lower town, and they cultivated the habit of strolling out from the city. The picturesque excursion was a healthy practice, through which they enjoyed both the walk and the view of the landscape, combining business and pleasure. Ouseley considered Victoria Hill a favourite and picturesque area of Bahia, and it was also the chosen site of several chacaras, or quasi-rural residences; these were favoured by the British in Brazil, who treasured country living, seen at this time as a moral corrective against the evils of the city and the court.

Ouseley's drawings found their way to other Englishmen, with notes of how they could enjoy a tourist journey. The illustrated album not only suggested places that were fit to be painted, but also provided sufficient information for travellers to find them. The writer pointed out, for example, that: 'a tolerable carriage road leads to the English Cemetery, marked by a cross in the foreground, and to the point (pont) of San Antonio, as well as along the coast.' (6)

Attracted by the effect of time on civilizations, Ouseley found ruins, a few miles from Bahia on the Atlantic coast, near the Rio Vermelho. Ruined Chapel of San Goncalo was rendered an object of interest to Ouseley due to its 'picturesque position and interior and the solitary and deserted aspect of the little chapel.' But, in reply to his archaeological inquiries about the chapel of San Goncalo, he discovered that its existence was unknown. He was very struck by this little stone ruin, from an artistic point of view, but also by the little importance it had for the people of the country. (7)

The Brazilian coast, notably that of Rio de Janeiro, represented the greatest stimulus to the feeling of the picturesque. It provided rough terrain and a great variety of viewpoints, always ready to surprise the observer. The configuration of the coastal cities and the planting of architecture on hilly and irregular territory met the needs of British landscaping. The strong presence of vegetation and seaside hills made Nature itself a predominant symbol among the constructed group. Also part of the picturesque repertoire were the isolated house amidst vegetation, the mix of architecture with some aspect of nature, and the chacaras and country residences, which provided the ideal model of an ambience treasured by European travellers in Rio de Janeiro, as well as in Bahia and Pernambuco. Therefore Ouseley insisted: 'There is no picturemaking in this sketch. It is a mere portraiture of the singular features that strike one on entering the outer harbour of Rio de Janeiro and looking back to the ocean.' (8)

Among the reliefs of a jagged coast, the tall peaks serve as orientation points. The view of Corcovado Mountain from the Praia Grande in Rio de Janeiro is taken from outside the city, so as to enhance the different scales. From the detailed foreground to the blue hills that flee to the background, with the familiar peak of the Corcovado, the observer travels heights and reaches various fugues. The vision of a beautiful bay springs from the variety of a picturesque shore. The aesthetic standards of this time were established by the abandonment of regularity and symmetry, being metric equivalents of English garden design.

A play is established between the natural aspect and the trick of painting, showing nature with elegance and civility. The world is given a hierarchy and shown with aplomb, according to the good composition of a painting. One can observe from the rich rendering of the vegetation that the formation of the plants was conditioned to the principles of composition. They were treated without detailing, as mass or area of the drawing, so as to be contained in the arrangement. They did not warm to the principle of expansion and transformation, as you can see happening in other visual representations of the time.

Mangueiras was a villa built by an Italian architect in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, occupied for a period by the British Legation. The landscape conceived as scenery for the architecture demonstrated the triumph of the classical over the rustic. Another point of interest is the cultivated surroundings and the variety of species planted within sight. Ouseley also recorded the farmhouse of the Santana do Paquequer farm, another fellow countryman's property, which would give birth to the mountain town of Teresopolis; it is considered the oldest document on the fluminense town.

Another amateur artist was Emeric Essex Vidal. He went four times to Brazil, the first time in 1808, accompanying the Portuguese royal family. He returned as an officer in the British fleet in the South Atlantic, from 1816 to 1818, when he made renderings of Rio de Janeiro such as the House at the foot of the Corcovado (1817). He was again in Brazil from 1826 to 1829, and from 1834 to 1837, during the second voyage of Admiral Hamond (9) [icon. 5].

Vidal also established the various relations between architecture and the landscape, now in relation to coastal or surface topographies, and then in relation to the masses of vegetation. Let us consider how he imagined welcoming landscapes and fellowship in nature, through a more direct approach to rusticity, using watercolour. (The views of Brazil in his sketchbook were not published.) He registered the outdoor way of life in the countries of warm climates, certain ways of relaxing outside the colonial country houses, as in View from Mr. Derbyshire's House (1827), in which he draws on the attributes of washed colour, and sunlight. He observed the calm life of Botafogo bay, at the beginning of which stood out a house with iron bars and gates and a varanda, which appears in The Porton at Botafogo (Rio de Janeiro, 1835). The Serra dos Orgaos (undated) was another striking scene to European eyes, for the pleasant country life. We see men and animals resting in the vale, beyond which one can discern the general atmosphere of hills and mountain ranges near the city of Sao Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro.

Watercolours that reproduce aspects of the surroundings of the city reveal the elasticity that the term picturesque acquires in the nineteenth century. The picturesque character of the landscape in The Valley of Laranjeiras (1835) is shown in the plastic figures that sprinkle the region: they are the Negro washerwomen. In this context, picturesque is a quality made by popular types in the natural landscape, a triumph of rustic values.

Within the vague notion of picturesque, classical taste shifts to Romantic. Garden Scene on the Braganza Shore (Fig. 1) was a contribution of William Havell. The scene was painted when he was something of an official artist, invited to join Lord Amherst's embassy to Peking, in 1816-17. He only returned to England in 1827, when he prepared this gouache, presently in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London [icon. 6].

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Let us examine some aspects of the adventurous life of a travelling artist. After the voyage to Peking, Havell stayed in India for eight years, living by painting small portraits. He is of a generation of English artists who sought to overcome the old model of landscape tradition, inherited from the journey to Italy, and define the national landscape. He travelled around Great Britain sketching mountains, lakes and valleys, and in 1807 he moved to the English Lake District, where he rented a cottage for a considerable period, in order to live among the scenes he wanted to paint, rather than make fleeting excursions. This heir of the tradition of the picturesque excursion has a vigorous approach to nature and a feeling for design and colours. He would get to know the works of Constable, and of Turner, the supreme interpreter of nature, and he played a part in the development of the English school of landscape at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He has a place among the artists who chose to work according to certain personal choices, not by commission, since the genre of landscape drew the attention only of anonymous clients.

He contributed, with other artists, to A series of picturesque views of Noblemen's and Gentlemen's seats, with drawings made before he went to the East, enriched with historical and descriptive accounts of each subject, while aquatints from his watercolours are contained in the book Picturesque Views on the River Thames. (10)

It must be said that the prototypal images in the Arcadian ideal--harmonizing classical architecture with its exuberant trees and distant waters, a theme of the seventeenth century--were gradually adopted by varieties of national European landscapes, shaped according to each geology and vegetation. Through the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, many English artists on picturesque travels through their own territory were in pursuit of a particular landscape tradition, strongly associated with the mystique of national identity, as they mapped their topography, and images of their homeland appeared. The same procedure was later to be skilfully used in Brazilian scenery by European travellers. Thus Brazil was favoured by an Arcadian mapping.

Maria Graham (later known as Lady Maria Callcott) was a writer and amateur artist who received her education around the world. She lived in Cochinchina with her father, who was an Admiral, and visited India between 1808 and 1815. She came to Brazil for the first time in 1821, aboard the frigate of Thomas Graham, her first husband, en route to Chile, and stayed for spells until 1825. For a short time she was governess to the imperial princess D. Maria (daughter of D. Pedro I), who would later become D. Maria II of Portugal.

Maria Graham's statement on picturesque taste is written in her own words:

We sometimes ventured into the wild and dense forest, through gaps filled with bushes, and bursting into open fields, with scattered coconut trees, among which country houses, farms and plantations could be seen. From each rising one could see the bay, the sea or the lake, completing the panorama. Here and there the immense gameleira rose like a tower, adorned with, besides its own leaves, countless parasites, from the stiff cactus to the tilandsia, the constant presence of a church or monastery tower smoothens and turns noble the features of the land. (11)

The text is related to the image Tree in a Garden, Bahia, one of the illustrations in her book, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, and Residence There During Part of the Years 21, 22, 23 (1824). [icon. 7]

Graham was always alert to tropical varieties. She mentioned the tilandsia, an aerial species, and the gameleira tree, whose timber was used to make canoes and gamelas (wooden bowls, or porringers). But besides the strictly botanical interest, she expressed a liking for the twisty shape of the tree, whose branches criss-crossed, and whose roots threw themselves over other trees. As a writer, she proved on the one hand to be a historian, bent on knowing Brazil, and even sketching a summary of Southey's History of Brazil; (12) on the other, an author who left a subjective statement, who became involved with the issue at hand, developed with current impressions, and with the sincerity of the comments made in the first person, as in a diary. Just as in the writings, her original drawings expressed a certain liberty of comment and the oscillations of an impressionable and voluble person, rich in feelings, who would be affected by the appearance of things, and by the impressions they made.

She observed nature by retaining what John Ruskin would call the 'leading or governing lines', being capable, as he rightly understood, of expressing vital truth. As Ruskin puts it: 'I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive of the past history and present action of the thing. [...] Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines; see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss.' (13)

While man ventured to experience direct relations with the landscape, it allowed him personal choices and intimist ways, which are, in my view, as important as conventional practices for the identification of places. Besides the introduction of the Brazilian scenery into the conventional repertoire of nineteenth-century landscape, the English travellers also expressed individual visions.

Maria Graham approached rocky perspectives, of sudden cliffs, also taken to be picturesque. In From the Corcovado she noted a rough and steep cliff, in whose aridity appeared the shape of the small vegetation: the vital strivings of a plant were born. As a reader of the landscape, she wrote of 'the extensive lines of the Brazilian farmhouses, that here and there emphasized the solitude of the nature'. She did not consider them Spartan, but simply poor, 'with no association with any idea of improvement'. And though, in Brazil, nature seemed to her 'as beautiful as in India or in Italy' she thought that the 'lack of any relation with man, as an intellectual or moral being, removed half of the enchantment'. (14)

She devoted herself to the distant view of the peaks while inhabiting the intimate space of the garden. In the drawing The View of Corcovado, the garden, abounding with varieties of life, functions as a repoussoir from where one can see the edge of the irregular peak. The hortus conclusus is a place for retreat and contemplation.

These drawings made by Maria Graham were published in her Journal of a Voyage to Brazil. The book defended the emancipation of Brazil from Portuguese rule and showed the indignation with the slaving regime on the part of the British, bent on fighting trafficking of Negroes. In addition to prints made from her own drawings, her book also contains prints on the slave trade made from the aeuvre of Augustus Earle, whom she met in Brazil.

Augustus Earle frequented the Royal Academy, along with Sir Charles Landseer and William Turner. He abandoned the tradition of academic painting and showed affinities with the English social satirists of the eighteenth century, such as Hogarth, turning to urban scenes and costumes. Much travelled, Augustus Earle was in Rio de Janeiro in the years 1820, 1821 and 1824 and joined FitzRoy's expedition on the Beagle for a few months in 1832. His few travel works on Brazil are presently to be found in the Commonwealth National Library in Canberra, Australia [icon. 8].

I point out his original work Gate and Slave Market at Pernambuco, in oil on canvas (Fig. 2), which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824, and which I believe to be the one in the Brazilian collection. The architectural scenery was probably based on a drawing made by Maria Graham. The alignment of the buildings leads to the north gate of Recife, having in the foreground a group of Negroes for sale, scattered in the yard. The scenes, made by Earle, with strong inflections of humour, introduced certain deformations in the figures. In the same book where he published Gate and Slave Market at Pernambuco, another illustration by Earle appeared on the same theme: Rio de Janeiro Slave Market, at Valongo.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Urban Centre and Outskirts

It would be impossible to account for senses built by the landscape without weaving counterpoints. In the early nineteenth century the city of Rio de Janeiro was expanding to outside the area of Portuguese occupation, the urban colonial nucleus. Like other Europeans in Brazil, English visitors formed discrete groups, in Rio as well as in Bahia or in Recife. They lived in 'country houses' on the outskirts or in calm bays, such as Botafogo. They ventured in picturesque excursions through the forest or to the Tijuca waterfall, or they climbed the Corcovado. They fled from the environment of downtown Rio de Janeiro, an area with poor conditions of hygiene, with a notable presence of freed Negroes and slaves. This despite the fact that the city had undergone certain improvements at the end of the eighteenth century, and was much changed since the arrival of the Portuguese Court, in 1808.

The designation of 'suburban garden' was also a prescription to cure the afflictions of city life. The English ways of cultivating nature and the spirit--idealizing the garden as a bucolic place of rest and isolation, setting hospitable residences and chacaras among the woods and suburban areas--make a counterpoint to the Portuguese colonial ways. I refer here to the more compact urban occupation and to the inhabitation of sobrados--adjoining constructions, one next to the other, raised along the sidewalk, with windows opening directly on to the street, from which they could enjoy the promenade of the people. In short, I refer to the architectural and urban patterns most suited to social living. (15)

Relatively few impressions of the central area, occupied by the Negro population, appear in the works of English travellers, although there are some notable ones, like those of William Smyth, an officer in the British Navy in the South Atlantic. The Palace Square, taken from a boat opposite the loading place is a view of the arrival at Rio de Janeiro by sea. And Sketch taken from Market place, Rio de Janeiro (Fig. 3) is another view of the same place taken from the interior of the city. They are watercolours made in 1832, on double sheets, which are part of an unpublished book of drawings. The watercolour View of the Fountain of the Carioca, made in 1833, is one of the most important iconographic documents on buildings, transport, and other aspects of the population that frequented the downtown region [icon. 9].

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The urban landscape of the city of Rio de Janeiro merits a splendid circular panorama from the top of the Morro do Castelo, on eight sheets, drawn by William John Burchell in 1826 (16) [icon. 10]. Himself a botanist, William Burchell came to Brazil with the draughtsman Charles Landseer in the committee that accompanied the diplomatic mission of Charles Stuart, British Ambassador to Portugal, charged with the recognition of Brazilian independence. Burchell stayed in Brazil from 1825 to 1829. His panorama shows the constructive handling of the structural components of visual representation, obtaining results which were not simply deduced from the information of the view. His perception is that of a constructor of the landscape, while the picturesque view reveals engagement with the spectacle offered by nature, situated in the domain of an aesthetic of reception. For the grasp of the picturesque the artist used a psychological and doctrinal method of analysis of the aesthetic impression. He did not dwell on beauty, but on the subjective faculty, which made him feel and enjoy the world.

Burchell's panorama reveals the constructive dimension of the city itself, implanted along the hillsides. The Greek word panorama means vision of the whole, while the panoramic drawing defies the reach of the perceptive field. The drawing of a panorama demands the logical organization of great spaces and sensibility to detail, and the capacity for dominance of the space in all directions, which should match the accurate information required by this genre. The reduction of the landscape to the architectural geometry followed the teachings of perspective. Burchell worked out an inventory of the built-up spaces of Rio de Janeiro, in the manner of encyclopaedists, revealing his profile as artist-scientist. A noteworthy botanic explorer, he undertook a great journey through the hinterland of Brazil, collecting a herbarium of 7,200 species. He left hundreds of watercolours with subtle and accurate observations of the Brazilian cities and other places through which he passed. But drawings and watercolours were preparatory techniques and the studies of this talented artist were not published; they are to be found today in the Museum Africa in Johannesburg. He also produced the Catalogus Geographicus Braziliensis, a manuscript in nine volumes, whose whereabouts are unknown.

Transformations of Nature

Finally, I would like to present in a few words another aspect of the poetic of the English travellers, who carefully observed the transformations of nature. And in these cases, the landscape takes on, above all, the function of metaphor of subjective feelings. The human humours approach those of the states of nature.

The works of Emeric Essex Vidal and John Christian Schetky make clear the propensities of artists who worship sensation, capable of perceiving atmospheric variations and benefiting from the effects of the movement of winds, from the variations of light, and changes in humidity and temperature. They handle through painting the transformations and the uncontrollable forces of nature. As we know, variations of light have the power of making the painted scene temporary, giving it the ephemeral character of an event registered at a precise time of day or night, at a moment when the sun strikes, or with the threat of rain, or a clear atmosphere. Such themes had the gift of translating into values immediately plastic and luminous, in qualities compatible with the artistic visual language itself.

Transport Vessel under a Summer Gust of Wind was a watercolour sketched by the Naval Officer Emeric Essex Vidal in 1835. It is an expression of a stormy sea, which haunts maritime imaginations, as the vessel is threatened by the arrival of a storm. The image of danger at sea is also present in his watercolour entitled Slave Brig, made in 1834. It also registers the horrors of slavery and slave trafficking in the crossing from Africa to America, in the oppressive atmosphere and the precarious conditions of an excessively loaded vessel on a stormy sea. Trafficking had been forbidden since 1807 and the image was made one year after the abolition of slavery in England [icon. 11]. It is hard not to remember The Slave Ship (also called Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying--Typhoon coming on) painted by Turner, a work in which Ruskin found the most sublime of seas. (17)

Scenes of foundering are recurrent in the Romantic fantasy. Salvage of Stores and Treasures from H. M. S. Thetis at Cape Frio, consisting of two oil canvases (Figs 4 & 5), was painted by John Christian Schetky in 1833 and is the property of the National Maritime Museum, London. This is a work in which the dimension of the sublime reaches a higher expression. The canvases concern the loss of a frigate carrying a valuable cargo which went down off the Brazilian coast on 4 December 1830. The two paintings show the same stretch of the coast off Cabo Frio, in Rio de Janeiro state, in contrasting conditions: at one moment, the calm of the sea facing the rocks; at another moment, the indomitable sea, the furious mass of the waters breaking on the rocky coast. The human soul is transposed to a tranquil sea and a turbulent sea. In the stable composition of the sea there is the human control over the universe, by principles of intellectual and artistic order. In the uncontrollable movement of the sea there are the limits of reason and the mindless forces of nature, the sensation of pleasure from the threat of man put in danger--the sublime horror [icon. 12].

[FIGURES 4-5 OMITTED]

In this final image there lies an eloquent metaphor of the human adventure, the journey through landscape.

University of Sao Paulo

Iconographic References

[1] Sydney Parkinson (1745-71) Watercolours made during Captain Cook's first voyage around the world (1768-71), Natural History Museum, London. The Bank's Florilegium, vol. XVI, contains Brazilian plant species.

[2] Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (German, 1794-1868) Vogelteich am Rio de Sao Francisco (Bird Pond on the San Francisco River), India ink and sepia on paper, Maria Luiza and Oscar Americano Foundation, Sao Paulo. Illustration from the book by Spix and Martius, Atlas Zur Reise in Brasilien. Some of the plants also appear in the Martius's Flora Braziliensis.

[3] William Alexander (1767-1816) Rio Aqueduct, 1792, watercolour, British Museum.

[4] William Gore Ouseley (1797-1866) Views in South America from original drawings made in Brazil, the River Plate and Parana by William Gore Ouseley Esq Her Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary of the State of La Plata and formally Charge des Affaires at the Court of Brazil (London: Thomas McLean, 1852). This contains 25 lithographs by J. Needham, based on Ouseley's originals, made between 1823 and 1833.

--Victoria Hill and Cemetery. Harbour of Bahia, lith.

--Ruined Chapel of San Goncalo Bahia, lith.

--Corcovado Mountain--view from Praia Grande, in Rio de Janeiro, lith.

--Mangueiras--suburb R J, lith / Mangueiras--suburb R J, watercolour.

[5] Emeric Essex Vidal (1796-1861)--House at foot of Corcovado, 1817, watercolour.

--View from Mr Derbyshire's House at Engenho Velho, RJ 1827, watercolour.

--The Porton at Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro 1835, watercolour.

--Serra dos Orgaos, n.d., watercolour.

--The valley of Laranjeiras from the bridge of Catete, RJ 1835, watercolour.

[6] William Havell (1782-1857)--Garden Scene on the Braganza Shore--gouache on paper, 1827, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The gouache was based on an original sketch made in 1816, when Havell passed through Rio de Janeiro en route to China.

[7] Maria Graham (1785-1842)--Tree in a garden at Bahia, n.d., sepia on paper.

--View of Rio. Corcovado from a homegarden, 1822, pencil on paper.

--From the Corcovado, 1824, pencil, sepia and India ink on paper, British Museum, London

Reproduced in Maria Graham's book: Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, and Residence There During Part of the Years 21, 22, 23 (London: Longman & C. & J. Murray, 1824).

[8] Augustus Earle (1793-c. 1839)--Gate and Slave Market at Pernambuco, n.d., oil on canvas--Geyer Collection, Museu Imperial, Rio de Janeiro.

--Slave Market in Rio de Janeiro, 1845, watercolour, British Museum, London. Reproduced in Maria Graham's book (see above). Original drawings made in Brazil, between 1820 and 1824.

[9] William Smyth (1800-77)--The Palace Square, taken from a boat opposite loading place, 1832.

--Sketch taken from Market place, Rio de Janeiro, 1832. Watercolours on paper, in two sheets, form part of a sketchbook, 1832-34, Museu Imperial, Rio de Janeiro.

--View of the Fountain of Carioca, 1833, watercolour on paper.

[10] William Burchell (1781-1863)--Rio de Janeiro--Panorama on eight sheets, 1826. Pencil and watercolour on paper, Museum Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa.

[11] Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861)--Transport Vessel under a Summer Gust of Wind, 1835, watercolour on paper.

--Slave brig, 1834, watercolour on paper. Geyer Collection, Museu Imperial, Rio de Janeiro.

[12] John Christian Schetky (1778-1874)--Salvage of Stores and Treasures from H. M. S. Thetis at Cape Frio, 1833 (two images).

Oil on canvas, National Maritime Museum, London.

(1) 'Pelo Tejo vai-se para o Mundo. | Para alem do Tejo ha a America | E a fortuna daqueles que a encontram. | Ninguem nunca pensou no que ha para alem | Do rio da minha aldeia. || O rio da minha aldeia nao faz pensar em nada. | Quem esta ao pe dele esta so ao pe dele.' From section XX of 'O Guardador de Rebanhos' (1911-12), published under the heteronym 'Alberto Caeiro'. Fernando Pessoa, Obra poetica (Sao Paulo: Nova Aguilar, 1997), p. 214.

(2) Walter Benjamin, Immagini di Citta, trans. by Marisa Bertolini, 2nd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), p. 105.

(3) Gilberto Ferrez, Iconografia do Rio de Janeiro, 1530-1890: Catalogo Analitico, 2 vols (Rio de Janeiro: Casa Jorge Editorial, 2000).

(4) Ana Maria Belluzzo, Brasil dos Viajantes, 3 vols (Sao Paulo: Metalivros, 1994), iii, 130-33.

(5) On landscape and the picturesque, see: Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape, Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800 (Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1990); Simon Schama, Paisagem e Memoria (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996); Attilio Brilli, Il viaggio in Italia: Storia di uma grande tradizione culturale dal XVI al XIX secolo (Milan: La Silvana Editoriale, 1987); Kenneth Clark, Civilizacao [1st English edn 1969] (Sao Paulo: Livraria Martins Fontes Editora, 1980); Francis Donald Klingender, Arte e Rivoluzione industriale (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editori, 1972).

(6) Sir William Gore Ouseley, Views in South America from original drawings made in Brazil, the River Plate, the Parana etc. by William Gore Ouseley Esq, Her Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary of the States of La Plata and formally Charge des Affaires at the Court of Brazil (London: Thomas McLean, 1852).

(7) Ouseley, ibid.

(8) This is a comment by the author on the configuration of the watercolour entitled Pao de Acucar. Ouseley, ibid.

(9) Os Diarios do Almirante Graham Eden Hamond, 1825-1834/38, trans. by Paulo F. Geyer (Rio de Janeiro: Editora JB, 1984), p. 28. The watercolours published in Emeric Essex Vidal, Picturesque Illustrations of Buenos Aires and Montevideo (London: R. Ackermann, 1820) are from the same period as House at Foot of Corcovado.

(10) A Series of Picturesque Views of Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Seats (London: R. Havell & Son, 1823); A Series of Picturesque Views on the River Thames (London: R. Havell & Son, 1812).

(11) Maria Graham, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, and Residence There During Part of the Years 21, 22, 23 (London: Longman and C. & J. Murray, 1824), p. 167.

(12) Robert Southey, Historia do Brasil [First English publication 1810-19] (Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; Sao Paulo: Edusp, 1981).

(13) John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing; in Three Letters to Beginners (New York: Wiley and Halsted, 1857), from Letter II. [Text consulted on-line at <http://www.howtodrawit.com/drawing/sketching/sketchingintro.html> on 16 November 2006.]

(14) Maria Graham, p. 218.

(15) Gilberto Freyre, Ingleses no Brasil: Aspectos da influencia britanica sobre a vida, a paisagem e a cultura do Brasil , 3rd edn [first published 1948] (Rio de Janeiro: TopBooks, 2000).

(16) Gilberto Ferrez, O Brasil do primeiro Reinado, visto pelo Botanico William John Burchell 1825-1829 (Rio de Janeiro: Fundacao Moreira Salles/Fundacao Pro Memoria, 1981), p 39-47.

(17) 'But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840.' John Ruskin, Modern Painters (London: Smith, Elder, 1848), p. 376. [Text consulted on-line at <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/ruskin/empi/3rdedition/3b376.htm> on 24 November 2006.]