- 48
Frans Jansz. Post
Description
- Frans Jansz. Post
- Landscape in Brazil
- Signed lower left: F POST
- Oil on oak panel
Provenance
Literature
Condition
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Catalogue Note
The building to the left is almost certainly the end of a sugar mill, probably a structure erected by the Portugese and taken over by the Dutch colonists. Similar sugar mills, constructed of local limestone arcading with open gable-ends, can be see in many of Post's paintings of Brazil. One depicted in great detail is in the painting dated 1644, painted for Johan Maurits van Nasau-Siegen, and now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.2 In the present work, the building beyond it to the left, on top of a hill, is no doubt intended to be the mill-owner's house. A similar hipped-gabled house with an open verandah on the first floor can be seen in a Sugar Mill painting in Recife, Instituto Ricardo Brennand.3 The structure above and to the right is a porched chapel, also probably originally Portugese. Similar chapels occur in several of Post's landscapes with sugar mills painted in the late 1660s, during what Corrêa do Lago defined as Post's third phase of activity, and the present work is likely to belong to this date and phase.4
1. P. and B. Corrêa do Lago, Frans Post (1612–1680), Milan 2007.
2. Idem, p. 216, no. 59, reproduced.
3. Idem, p. 292, no. 114, reproduced, especially the detail facing page.
4. For a similar chapel see the Sugar Mill dated 1667 in Sāo Paulo, Fundaçāo Maria Luisa e Oscar Americano; idem, p. 279, no. 104, reproduced.