D’abord peindre le prince : les conflits de Jean-Baptiste Debret et Nicolas-Antoine Taunay à la Cour de Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

French painters Jean-Baptiste Debret and Nicolas Antoine Taunay were leading figures in the history of Brazilian art in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Both were part of the artistic education project organized by Joachim Le Breton, the former secretary of the Class of Fine Arts at the Institut de France in 1816 who left France at the delicate moment of Napoleon’s fall and the return of the Bourbons to power. In Brazil, Debret and Taunay vied for space within the limited art circles of the Bragança court, itself facing social and political instability upon the acclamation of Dom João VI to the throne of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, whose capital centered in Rio de Janeiro. On one hand, Debret sought to be the court’s primary painter, capturing important political events of the period through history paintings, producing the royal portrait of King Dom João VI and sketches of Dom Pedro I later on. On the other, Taunay moved closer to Queen Carlota Joaquina with requests to join the court as a teacher of drawing and curator of its artistic works, producing a series of portraits of the royal family and a historic landscape. There was not, however, room for both of them. Thus, this article aims to discuss the artistic production of the two French painters in Brazil, focusing especially on the portrait genre as well as their political roles in a royal court replete with conflict and competing interests.

Keywords

• Jean-Baptiste Debret
• Nicolas-Antoine Taunay
• portraiture
• french artistic mission
• 19th century