Lot Essay
A fine collection of photographs of imperial Brazil, including prints of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia by Marc Ferrez, the leading photographer in Brazil in the nineteenth century. Ferrez and his contemporaries were the first photographers to travel widely within Brazil: 'of particular importance was [Ferrez's] creation of an idealised photographic vision of imperial Brazil ... To accomplish this task, he turned his back on the only lucrative genre of the period - the portrait - and sought to finance his own photographs through those rare activities that permitted travel in Brazil, such as documentation of railroad construction, thanks to which he journeyed through the states of Minas Gerais ..., Paraná, and São Paulo. He also joined an expedition of the Geologic Commission of the Empire (1875-1876), headed by geographer and geologist Charles Frederick Hartt, during which he became the first person to photograph the Botocudo Indians in the interior of Bahia'. (P. Vasquez, 'Marc Ferrez: A Master of Brazilian Photography' in The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 1875-1945, 21, Miami, 1995, p. 35.)
Henschel, photographer to the Imperial Family and recorded in Brazil from 1871, is well represented in the present album by his views in the Itatiaia mountains, and at Nova Friburgo, including the illustrated albumen print of the Pinel Falls (incorrectly titled 'Tijuca' in the present album): 'Henschel chose his landscapes in a very personal manner. Particularly mysterious is the series taken in the rarely visited Itatiaia Mountains in the state of Rio de Janeiro, an arid region with scant vegetation and rocky hills ... A series taken in Nova Friburgo, also in Rio de Janeiro, was made after the partnership with Benque ... . No matter how vast the expanse or how rugged the terrain, Henschel succeeded in depicting the people and buildings in a comfortable, if not intimate, relationship with the land, a relationship particularly evident in the picture of the valley and station at Rio Grande or in the waterfall at Pinel, in which the swollen stream does not threaten the men who have hacked their way through the dense forest to get there.' (G. Ferrez and W.J. Naef, Pioneer Photographs of Brazil, 1840-1920, New York, 1976).
Henschel, photographer to the Imperial Family and recorded in Brazil from 1871, is well represented in the present album by his views in the Itatiaia mountains, and at Nova Friburgo, including the illustrated albumen print of the Pinel Falls (incorrectly titled 'Tijuca' in the present album): 'Henschel chose his landscapes in a very personal manner. Particularly mysterious is the series taken in the rarely visited Itatiaia Mountains in the state of Rio de Janeiro, an arid region with scant vegetation and rocky hills ... A series taken in Nova Friburgo, also in Rio de Janeiro, was made after the partnership with Benque ... . No matter how vast the expanse or how rugged the terrain, Henschel succeeded in depicting the people and buildings in a comfortable, if not intimate, relationship with the land, a relationship particularly evident in the picture of the valley and station at Rio Grande or in the waterfall at Pinel, in which the swollen stream does not threaten the men who have hacked their way through the dense forest to get there.' (G. Ferrez and W.J. Naef, Pioneer Photographs of Brazil, 1840-1920, New York, 1976).