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Landscape in Brazil with Sugar Plantation
Frans Jansz. Post (Dutch, 1612–1680)
1660
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 87 cm, width 113 cm, height 106 cm, width 131 cm
- Culture
- Dutch
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
Pineapple cacti, watermelons and coconut palms are some of the plants featured in the flora seen in the foreground here. The middle distance offers a view into the sugar factory, manned by slaves. We can trace the production process right from the harvested sugar canes to the finished sugar being packed into large crates, ready to be shipped to Europe. Frans Post was one of the first landscape painters to paint in the New World. All of his paintings and drawings show scenes from Dutch Brazil. When Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau-Siegen, arrived in Dutch Brazil as governor, Frans Post was among the artists who joined him in order to depict the natives and the local flora and fauna. Post must have drawn a multitude of sketches that he would later use as the basis for the many paintings he created after his return in 1644.
