Johann Moritz Rugendas

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Rugendas

Costumes in Rio, 1823

Slave hunter, 1823

Indians in a farm, 1824

Johann Moritz Rugendas (b. March 29, 1802, Augsburg, Germany; d. May 29, 1858), Weilheim, Germany), was a German painter, famous for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic information in several countries in the Americas, in the first half of the 19th century.

Rugendas was born to the seventh generation of a family of noted painters and engravers of Augsburg (he was a grandson of Georg Philipp Rugendas, 1666-1742, a noted painter of battles), and studied drawing and engraving with his father, Johann Lorenz Rugendas II (1775-1826). From 1815 to 1817 he studied with Albrecht Adam (1786-1862), and later in the Academy de Arts of Munich, with Lorenzo Quaglio II (1793-1869).

Inspired by the artistic work of Thomas Ender (1793-1875) and the travel accounts in the tropics by Austrian naturalists Johann Baptist von Spix (1781-1826) and Carl von Martius (1794-1868), Rugendas arrived in Brazil in 1821, where he was soon hired as an illustrator for Baron von Langsdorff's scientific expedition in Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Langsdorff was the general consul of the Russian Empire in Brazil and had a farm in the northern region of Rio de Janeiro, where Rugendas went to live with other members of the expedition. In this capacity, Rugendas visited the Serra da Mantiqueira and the historical towns of Barbacena, São João del Rei, Mariana, Ouro Preto, Caeté, Sabará and Santa Luzia.

Just before the fluvial phase of expedition started (a fateful travel to the Amazon) he got stranged from von Langsdorff, left the expedition and was substituted by artists Adrien Taunay and Hércules Florence. However, Rugendas remained on his own in Brazil until 1825, exploring and recording his many impressions of daily life in the provinces of Mato Grosso, Pernambuco, Bahia, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. He used mostly drawings and watercolors.

Returning to Europe between 1825 and 1828, Rugendas lived successively in Paris, Augsburg and Munich, with the aim of learning new art techniques, such as oil painting.. There, he published from 1827 to 1835, with the help of Victor Aimé Huber, his monumental book Voyage Pittoresque dans le Brésil (Picturesque Voyage to Brazil), with more than 100 illustrations, which is, to this day, one of the most important documents about Brazil in the 19th century. He also studied in Italy, visiting Pisa, Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice and Sicily.

Inspired again by a noted explorer and naturalist, Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859), to whom he was introduced once, Rugendas sought financial support to a much more ambitious project of recording pictorially the life and nature of Latin America; in his words, an endeavour to truly become the illustrator of life in the New World. In 1831 he travelled first to Haiti, and then to Mexico em 1831. He began to use oil painting there, with excellent results. Unfortunately, Rugendas was incarcerated and expelled from the country after he involved himself with a failed coup against Mexico's president, Anastasio Bustamante, in 1834.

From 1834 to 1844 he travelled to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Bolivia, and finally went back to Rio de Janeiro, in 1845. Well accepted and feted by the court of Emperor Dom Pedro II, he executed portraits of several members of the royal court and participated in an artistic exposition.

In 1846, with 54 years of age, Rugendas departed to Europe, never again to return to Latin America. King Maximilian II of Bavaria acquired most of his works in exchange for a life pension. His painting "Columbus taking Possession of the New World" (1855) is exposed in the Neue Pinakothek, in Munich. He died in eight years later, in penury.

[edit] Bibliography

Diener, P.: Rugendas, 1802-1858. Wissner; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Augsburg and Santiago de Chile, 1997. A massive catalogue of works in Spanish and Portuguese.