Debret, Jean-Baptiste (1768–1848)

Jean-Baptiste Debret (b. 1768; d. 1848), French painter. Under the leadership of Joachim Lebreton (1760–1819), secretary of the fine arts class in the Institute of France, Debret left his country in 1816 and went to Rio de Janeiro with the French group known as the French Artistic Mission, which had been invited by the Portuguese government. The group was composed of Nicolas Antoine Taunay (1755–1830), a landscape painter; his brother, Auguste Marie Taunay (1768–1824), a sculptor; Auguste Henri Victor Grandjean De Montigny (1776–1850), an architect; Charles S. Pradier (1768–1848), an engraver; Sigismund Neukomm (1778–1858), a composer; and François Ovide, a specialist in mechanics. Although Debret was classified as a history painter, his first works in Brazil were portraits of the royal family, decorative paintings for public festivities, and stage settings for the Royal Theatre São João in Rio de Janeiro. It took ten years to establish the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts, where the members of the French group were supposed to teach. Meanwhile, Debret taught his students in a private house.

Debret's best-known work is a series of drawings depicting Brazilian life and culture, which was published in three volumes in 1834 and 1839 under the title Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil. The drawings and the explanatory texts that accompany them may be considered the most striking documents on Brazilian daily life in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Following what he calls a "logical order," Debret began his book with descriptions of Indians belonging to several tribes. Although he had not traveled outside Rio de Janeiro, various travelers gave him the information he needed to represent the Indian way of life in the interior. No one better than Debret depicted slave life in Rio de Janeiro, and his drawings shocked the members of the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute because of their realism.

As a history painter, Debret also depicted historical events of the late colonial period: Her Royal Highness Princess Leopoldina disembarking in Rio de Janeiro, the coronation of King João VI, the baptism of Princess María da Glória, the oath to the Constitution, and the coronation of Pedro I as emperor of Brazil.

See alsoFrench Artistic Mission .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Afonso Arinos De Melo Franco, Jean-Baptiste Debret: Estudos inéditos (1974).

Affonso De Escragnolle Taunay, A missão artística de 1816 (1956).

Additional Bibliography

Araujo, Ana Lucia. "Les représentations de l'esclavage dans les gravures des relations (Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil) de Jean-Baptiste Debret et (Deux années au Brésil) de François-Auguste Biard." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 30 (2005): 161-183.

Lima, Heloisa Pires. "Negros debretianos representações culturais presentes na obra voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil (1816 a 1839)." Ph.D. diss., University of São Paulo, 2006.

Lima, Valéria. Uma viagem com Debret. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2004.

                         Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva