Brazilian Landscape

The Haarlem artist Frans Post painted this tropical landscape in the mid-seventeenth century. It is a picture of a place in Brazil. In the landscape, natives in the foreground carry baskets of sugar cane to a water-powered sugar mill on the left in the centre ground. Post went to Brazil, which was a Dutch colony at the time, around 1640. He and Albert Eckhout had been commissioned to record the landscape, the inhabitants and the fauna in drawings and paintings. Post painted several landscapes on the spot. After his return to Holland in 1644, he produced a great many more, mostly based on the many drawings that he had made while he was there. This painting is part of his Dutch output. The exotic works were highly sought after. Today there are some 150 surviving Brazilian landscapes by this artist.