Configuring Latin America: the views by Rugendas and Marianne North
Vera Beatriz Siqueira
SIQUEIRA, Vera Beatriz. Configuring
Latin America: the views by Rugendas
and Marianne North. 19&20,
Rio de Janeiro, v. X, n. 2, jul./dez. 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.52913/19e20.X2.09b
[Português]
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The tropics of Rugendas
1.
When
the young painter of battles Johann Moritz Rugendas
came to Brazil in 1821, he had just
graduated from the Munich Academy and had no professional experience. He
followed the footsteps of other naturalists and artists who had opened the
doors of the New World to Europe. The turning point in his career was his
hiring as the draftsman of the scientific mission of Baron Langsdorff,
Consul-General of the Russian Empire in the country [Figure 1]. During this mission, and later on
his own, Rugendas dedicated himself to documenting Brazilian
nature and culture. Back to Europe in 1825, with the enthusiastic support of
his compatriot Alexander Von Humboldt, he published his monumental book Viagem pitoresca
ao Brasil (Picturesque
trip to Brazil) in Paris. The first edition, available upon request, was an
immediate publishing success in 1827, encouraging Rugendas
to become the illustrator of life in Latin America.
2.
The
conversion of his drawings into lithographs probably led him to realize how
much he still had to learn in order to cope with the
illustrative task. Artists who lithographed his boards, such as Richard
Bonington, a friend of Delacroix’s, or Jullian Vallou de Villeneuve, a pupil of Millet’s, may have
revealed to him new trends art was taking and modern taste. Bonington produced
one of the most romantic boards for his book Entrada da Baía do Rio de Janeiro (Mouth of the bay of Rio de
Janeiro), with the support of a descriptive hard pencil drawing of the Sugar
Loaf Mountain, turned into the scene of a tropical storm, with boats inclined
by the force of the wind, and rough skies and sea. Villeneuve transformed the
sketch of a cave made by Rugendas [Figure 2] in a scene marked by mystery, by the contemplative
isolation of the traveler and the game of light and shade (Caves near San Jose)
[Figure 3].
3.
Therefore,
before returning to the continent, Rugendas remained
in Europe, studying in Paris and Rome. The invaluable information about Latin
America which he had gathered thanks to his proximity to Humboldt added to the
further development of his rigid academic education. His intention was to
publish an encyclopedic and artistic work about the continent. Thus, his
journey started in 1831, with a trip to Mexico; from 1834 to 1844 he traveled
to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, and Bolivia; in 1845 he returned to Rio,
where he stayed until 1846. Such a long journey, the longest held by an artist
in Latin America, allowed for a very large thematic variety.
4. In Mexico, the first country visited by Rugendas, the trip was dedicated especially to natural
views and landscapes, according to Humboldt’s recommendations [Figure 4]. With an encyclopedic understanding of nature, Rugendas creates images which are the physiognomic
representation of the landscape, with topographical and botanical accuracy. He
gradually moves away from the master's advice, especially one of them:
"Avoid the temperate zones, Buenos Aires and Chile [...] Go where there
are many palm trees, ferns, cactus plants, snow-capped mountains and volcanoes,
go to the Andes Mountain Range [...]. A great artist like you must search for
what is monumental".[1]
5.
Rugendas visited the Andes and recorded its monumental nature.
However, it is possible to note a significant change in his focus of attention
during his eight years’ stay in Chile. Perhaps he was motivated by Humboldt's
lack of interest in the landscape of the Latin American southern cone, but, also inspired by the liberal ideas of the Latin
American personalities he made contact with, such as the Venezuelan Andrés
Bello (editor of El Araucano magazine, who
advocated for the opening for European culture and criticized the censorship by
the Catholic Church). Rugendas set aside the
topological description and the views in favor of recording indigenous people
and scenes of everyday life. In the first works made in Brazil, like the ones Rugendas made in Mexico, the representation of customs and
scenes of everyday life met, above all, the requirements of travel records and
was subject to the naturalistic interest. But those made in Chile and later in
Argentina and Uruguay had a new meaning.
6.
This
is what can be seen when comparing Costumes da Bahia (Costumes of Bahia
- 1835, colored lithography) [Figure 5], made in Brazil, A rainha
do mercado (The queen of the market - oil, 1833 to 1835), made in
Mexico [Figure 6], and O rapto de
Trinidad Salcedo (The abduction of Trinidad Salcedo - 1836 painting, made
in Chile [Figure 7]. The first scene has a strong documentary sense of
the local population, described with the same detail and individuality as the
plants that compose the natural scenario. The second one emphasizes the
principles Rugendas had learned with European artists
linked to the Barbizon landscaping, as the scene shows vividness and pictorial
naturalism, although still showing a documentarian interest. The third scene
has a literary inclination, and was probably made from
oral and written reports of indigenous conflicts in bordering regions. The
abduction of a woman by the Araucans is a recurring
theme in his works in Chile. Rugendas adopts a
literary approach to the theme, emphasizing the drama and incorporating
elements of the romantic visuality.
7.
In
Peru and Bolivia, the costumbrist theme
attracted interest, but it is the monumentality of the colonial architecture
and pre-Hispanic monuments that become important motifs. Of
course this new interest, as it always happens with European artists in
transit, comes already previously encoded. Peru, and more specifically its
capital, Lima, was known in Europe for its luxury and wealth. Humboldt
contradicted this mythical fame: "In Europe, Lima is described as a
luxurious and magnificent city, with remarkable female beauties. I did not see
anything like that."[2] But Rugendas
seems to have been more impressed by the words of his friend, the artist Juan
Espinosa, who having left Chile, settled in Arequipa, from where he wrote Rugendas long letters celebrating the originality of
Peruvian architecture and customs. In the painting A Praça
Maior de Lima (The Plaza Mayor of Lima) [Figure 8], the curiosity about the inhabitants and customs of
that country – which led the artist to devote particular attention to garments
and characteristic gestures of the local sociability - coexisted with the
accurate representation of the cathedral in the background. The documentary
intention also remains alive in the various drawings of archaeological and
architectural themes made by the artist.
8.
In
Argentina and Uruguay, the focus on everyday life scenes is renewed on the
pampas. The contact he had had with Argentine scholars exiled in Chile - such
as the diplomat Domingo del Oro, the poet Juan Godoy Guadalberto
and the liberal Domingo Augusto Sarmiento – led Rugendas
to the creation of a particular iconography to Argentina, where the gaucho
was a prominent figure. His freedom was celebrated by Domingo del Oro in an
article he sent to Rugendas in 1839: "A gaucho
can live as he wants, working very little [...] He does not depend on anyone.
His horse, his rope, his bola balls and knife are his only possessions and no obstacles prevent him from staying or
going wherever wants. He is the freest soul of all."[3]
9.
The
drawings and paintings with gaucho themes by the artist reveal extreme
attention to detail. Even a painting as Boleando
avestruzes (Catching ostriches), 1845-1846 [Figure 9], completed in Brazil, submits the dramaticity of the scene to a precise and capricious
linearism, as if the mythical freedom of the gaucho had to be, at once, honored
and contained by the descriptive strictness.
10.
Rugendas concludes his great American trip in Rio de Janeiro.
Then, his task as an illustrator seems to have been fulfilled in his previous
stay in Brazil, so the artist remains under the protection of the Court of Dom
Pedro II and allowing him to exhibit his work at the Academy. His only drawings
are panoramic views of the Guanabara Bay made on the day he had arrived in Rio,
and a few landscapes of its surroundings. He dedicates himself to concluding unfinished
paintings, treating them with a new romantic touch, which he exhibits with
great success in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition in 1845. Among
these works was O retorno da cativa
(The return of the captive woman), presented in the catalog as Retorno de uma mulher branca do cativeiro entre os indígenas (Return of a white woman from captivity among
the indians). Despite this essentially descriptive
title, Rugendas is praised by the director of the
Brazilian Academy, Félix-Émile Taunay, "not by the colors or perhaps by the drawing
correction, but by the grace [...] and above all by the high merits of the
composition and expression, and the author's extreme sensibility regarding the
balance of the bodies, the passions and the affections of the soul".[4]
11.
Between
one of his first iconic images of the rainforest - Floresta virgem brasileira com grupo de figuras (Brazilian
virgin forest with group of figures), 1830 [Figure 10] - and the figuration of the tropics which appears in
the background of the portrait of D. Pedro II, 1846 [Figura 11], there is effectively a leap regarding not only the
artist's trajectory and the incorporation of romantic pictorial issues, but
also the visual configuration of the Latin American continent itself. With the
proliferation of travel reports and the impressive dissemination of books,
prints, drawings and panoramas that occurred in the
early decades of the nineteenth century, the image of the tropics, to quote Nanci Stepan, was "tropicalized". In other words,
the European public is less interested in accurate descriptions of the Latin
American nature and geography than in the romantic experience of travels in the
tropics, which confirms their feelings of estrangement, fear
and surprise by creating images that are at the same time credible and
mythical, real and fantastic.
Eden and Eros:
Marianne North
12.
In her
first novel, The Voyage Out, published in 1915, Virginia Wolf writes
about Rachel Vinrace’s trip with her father from
London to South America. When arriving at the fictional port of Santa Marina,
where Rachel's aunt and uncle have a Villa, the British replicate in miniature
the closed and immutable world of the aesthetic and moral traditions of their
native country. However, this universe conflicts with the experience of
displacement and alienation caused by a trip along the Orinoco River, moving up
into the rainforest. At each stop of the vessel in small remote villages or
improvised ports close to the jungle, the group is divided into smaller groups
that follow trails in the forest.
13.
For
the young and inexperienced Rachel, the journey is literally fatal. It leads
her to find love, the discovery of which, in Woolf’s narrative, is associated
with the vertigo caused by the overload of colors and shades of the tropical
forest. Faced with the confusion and the immoderation of this double
experience, Rachel will succumb. Affected by an unexplained illness, probably
some of the little-known tropical diseases, she dies. At her funeral, only her
lover seems to be devastated. Her family and friends comfort themselves with
the conviction that their traditional values remain there, as a safe
destination, the native England that they take with them everywhere and that
can stabilize even the most radical or the darkest of experiences.
14.
For
Woolf, Rachel’s tragic fate represents the presumed future of women in general,
in a society still strongly marked by Victorian traditions. And it was a
particular woman who escaped this predetermined fate, among other figures of
the time, who inspired the writer to talk about the transatlantic voyage: the
artist and amateur naturalist Marianne North, whom Woolf knew well. Since 1882 the North Gallery
had been open at Kew Gardens, in the outskirts of London, gathering copies of
paintings of flora specimens from places all over the world where the artist
had been.
15.
In
other of Woolf’s texts, there are more direct references to North’s
naturalistic culture. This is the case of her last novel, Between the
acts, in which she mentions the tree known as "monkey puzzle
tree" or Araucaria imbricata, which became well-known when
Marianne North, though ill, decided to go to Chile in 1884, with the sole
purpose of representing it [Figure 12]. But it is certainly in a short story, Kew
Gardens, written in 1919, that we find a central poetic convergence between
Woolf and North. In the story, the writer describes the passage of four groups
of people in front of a flowerbed on a July day in the famous botanical gardens
of London. Woolf compares the irregular and random movement of visitors to the
zigzag flight of butterflies or the slow and determined rise of a snail on the
flowerbed. In the end, she extends her gaze and contrasts the flowerbed with
the sounds and colors of the garden and the city in the background. The
structure of the landscape composition, with a close foreground and a large and
distant background is common to both artists, and
reveals the relevance of the naturalistic culture in the creation of the visual
and literary modernity [Figure 13].
16.
In the
work of Marianne North, this narrative feature, recurrent in her paintings, is
above all a starting point. Even before embarking on her trips around the
globe, she intended to paint the tropical vegetation in situ, "in
the place where they were, in their natural abundance and exuberance." In order to do so, she will pursue and find these tropics
already visually configured as luxuriant, animating the geographical
imagination of Europeans and leading a legion of explorers and amateur artists
to the New World. North was different from most of them for her exclusive and
diligent dedication to travel and to record nature in every continent. She
never got married or had children. From 1869 on, with the death of her father,
she used her own money to travel and build the gallery that bears her name in
Kew Gardens [Figure 14]. At the time, this "temple of nature", as
she liked to call it, was a must for scholars of various fields of expertise.
Natural history was an important part of the culture of this period. And to
some extent, the direct experience of intercontinental travel and the
dissemination of her records were essential for the development of a modern and
liberal England, open to the future.
17.
North’s
work, however, was not easily classifiable. Many accuse her of not having any
training - neither in art nor in natural history -, for doing an inadequate job
both relating to the tradition of botanical painting and the tradition of fine
art, uncomfortably placing her production halfway. Such discomfort would be
clear even in the preface of the catalog of her own gallery, written by Sir
Joseph Hooker, British botanist and explorer, director of the gardens.
Committed to giving prominence to the instructive dimension of the images, he
invites the public to see beyond the beauty of the paintings, focusing on the
documentary data on the "wonders of the plant kingdom" that were
subject to extinction due to the progress of civilization.
18.
Inside
the gallery, the geographical organization of the 832 paintings (there,
arranged between 1882 and 1885) also seeks to emphasize their illustrative
content. But the set of images, especially those of exotic plants, generates
another kind of geography, more fanciful and poetic, which delimits along
general lines the idea of a permanently exuberant and sensual tropical nature.
Her travel itinerary shows us the desire to visit the so-called tropics: in
1871, in her first independent trip, she goes to North America, across the wild
region of the United States and Canada. At the end of the same year, as she
enthusiastically noted in her book, she goes to Jamaica, reaching the tropics
she had long dreamed of: "Finally in the West Indies! Christmas
Eve!".[5]
19.
The
following year, keeping to her plans to study tropical plants, she arrived in
Brazil, where she stayed until 1873. In 1875, she began a trip around the
world, stopping at Tenerife and then going to California, Japan, Borneo, Java,
and Ceylon. She spent the whole year in India in 1878 and traveled to Australia
and New Zealand in 1879. In 1883 she visited South Africa and from 1884 to 1885
she worked in Seychelles Islands and Chile. She gave up heading to Mexico due
to health issues. She made a last stop in Jamaica, the origin
and the end of her tropical experience.
20.
Both
in the written and the pictorial descriptions, we can see she was particularly
committed to presenting tropical nature in its exuberance and sensuality [Figure 15]. In the book, she seemed delighted with the
comprehensive and sensitive description of the window views from the rooms in
homes, hotels, cottages. Treating them as landscape, she divided them, like
Woolf, into a close foreground (giving the impression that we can even smell
the flower or hear the insect buzz), a middle ground and a distant background.
This compositional feature is recurrent in her work as a painter. North makes
drawings and watercolors outdoors, finalizing them as paintings several times
in her travel facilities or in her studio in England. In these works we can find some larger views and a great amount of
representations of particular plants and animals contrasting with a wide and
distant landscape.
21.
Her
paintings with "close-ups" of plants, birds and insects [Figure 16] or a collection of flower pots with specimens
generically called "wild", made in distant parts of the globe, reveal
her imaginative geography of the tropics, which is not subject to the limits of
physical geography. The contexts and environments of each of the places she
visited do not seem to interest her, unless for some picturesque feature that
can be added to her text or image. It did not matter to her if not all of these places belonged effectively to the tropics. Her
logic was much closer to the generalist view, and why not say it, to the
imperialist perspective of the British naturalists.
22.
As
already mentioned, in the course of the nineteenth
century, the development of travel and of the technical means of production and
distribution of their records resulted in the creation of a new kind of
traveler, and of a new public for travel reports, which prioritized not only
the scientific information on tropical nature, but also the aesthetic and
poetic experience the images could offer. When arriving for the first time in
the tropics, in Jamaica, North was delighted by the variety of tropical flora
she sees from her window [Figure 17] and exclaimed: "I was in a state of ecstasy,
and hardly knew what to paint first."[6]
23.
Her
paintings were still certainly subject to scientific postulates, portraying the
plants in their "habitat". But they should also dazzle the viewer,
renewing the experience of wonder before the tropics. Therefore, her works in
vibrant colors and somewhat rustic, with the paint often applied directly from
the tubes to the support, refer not only to the typical colors of the tropics,
but, before anything, to the enchantment they offer to the viewer, like the
hummingbirds and butterflies, which add a new element of sensuality and
eroticism.
24.
North
sought and found in the tropics the exuberance, sensuality
and exoticism the landscape of her homeland could not offer. But like her
fellow citizens from Virginia Woolf’s novel, after each of her trips through
the tropics, she returned to England where, finally, after completing her
gallery, she devoted herself to her own house and garden in Alderley [Figure 18], writing: ”Nothing is as charming as life in the
countryside of England, and no flowers are sweeter or more lovely than the
primroses, cowslips, bluebells, and violets that grow in abundance all around
me here."[7] However tragic, her illness, as
unexplained as the fictional traveler Rachel Vinrace's,
seemed to be the ideal fate for this amateur traveler (or travel lover), since
it led to paroxysm the adventurous character of the romantic journey and the
exuberant and exotic image of the Latin American region.
Bibliographic references
ADES, Dawn. Arte na América Latina. São Paulo:
Cosac Naify, 1997.
BANDEIRA, Julio. A
viagem ao Brasil de Marianne North. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2012.
DINNER, Pablo. Rugendas 1802-1858. Augsburg: Wiesner, 1997.
NORTH, Marianne. Recollections
of a happy life: being the autobiography of Marianne North. London:
Macmillan, 1892.
RUGENDAS, Johann Moritz. Viagem pitoresca
através do Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Edusp, 1989.
STEPAN, Nanci. Picturing tropical nature. London: Reaktion Books, 2001.
WOOLF, Virginia. Between
the acts; Kew Gardens; The voyage out. Texts are available at
leilabwww.24grammata.com. Last access on October 15, 2014.
_________________________________
[1] Apud
ADES, Dawn. Arte na América Latina. São Paulo:
Cosac Naify, 1997, p. 50.
[2] DINNER, Pablo. Rugendas 1802-1858. Augsburg: Wiesner, 1997, p. 51.
[3] Ibidem, p. 113.
[4] Ibidem, p. 117.
[5] NORTH, Marianne. Recollections of a
happy life: being the autobiography of Marianne
North. London: Macmillan, 1892, pp. 1-80.
[6] Ibidem, pp, 1-83.
[7] Apud BANDEIRA, Julio. A Viagem ao Brasil de Marianne North.
Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2012, p. 17.