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 en Brésil includes 180 woodcuts that reveal Brazil’s reliance on slave labor as well as describe the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. Thoroughly researched, Araujo places Biard’s work in the context of the European travel writing of the time and examines how representations of Brazil through French travelogues contributed and reinforced cultural stereotypes and ideas about race and race relations in Brazil. She further summarizes that similar representations continue and influence perspectives today.

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.

From 1865-1866, James accompanied the director of the recently established Museum of Comparative Zoology on a research expedition to Brazil. This critical, bilingual (English-Portuguese) edition of his diaries and letters includes reproductions of his drawings. This original material belongs to the Houghton Archives at Harvard University.

This virtually unknown, insightful account by a highly intelligent, observant and forthright Frenchwoman of her decade-long stay in Brazil during the 1850s provides a remarkable firsthand view of a slaveocrat society. In an effort to improve their family's fortune, enterprising and highspirited young Parisian AdFle Toussaint-Samson traveled with her husband from France to Brazil in the mid 1800s. While there, she wrote of her experiences, painting a vivid and detailed portrait of the reality of slavery, gender relations, and daily life in mid-nineteenth century Brazil. This eminently readable primary document provides a firsthand view of a slaveholding society, describing both men and women, slave and free, rich and poor. Well written and lively, A Parisian in Brazil is an excellent resource for courses on Latin America, women in Latin America, and Brazilian history.

Reproduction of the original: South America To-Day by Georges Clemenceau