Caboclo by Jean-Baptiste Debret 1834
circa 1834
- Classification
- Painting
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- Photographed by Wilfredor
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
About this work
An Indian lying down displaying his extreme skill in handling the bow and arrow. It occupies the center of the image, however, a little distant, stands another Indian in the same position and, farther back, a third archer, standing, also shoots his arrow in the wild and natural landscape, in which no sign of colonizers can be identified.
If the image (nudity, use of indigenous weapons, wild landscape) could suggest that we are in front of a "wild Indian", the title of the painting of Caboclos or civilized Indians and the text to which it corresponds, Village of São Lourenço, leave no doubt about the classification given by Debret to the characters: these are caboclos - "civilized Indians", generic name that, in the province of Rio de Janeiro, was given to "every civilized and baptized Indian."
The archer was the object of Debret's gaze, a caboclo of São Lourenço, who lived in intense contact with colonial society, yet maintained his skill with the bow and arrow and placed himself in that manner to attract the admiration of foreign travelers. According to the description, it was common to find them among the civilized of the villages, Indian archers, perhaps disdainful,…
