Frans Jansz. Post Haarlem circa 1612 - 1680

Frans Post was the first trained European artist to depict the landscape of South America.  As a young man he travelled to the north-east of Brazil with Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau-Siegen, who was Governor General of the Dutch colony there.  A very few paintings that he made there have come down to us, but the drawings that he must have made there (though very few survive), and above all his own recollections of the seven years he spent there, served as the basis for his entire output over the remaining 35 years of his life.

In the last decade of his career, Frans Post painted a number of Brazilian landscapes similar to this one on small panels.  They generally depict village scenes, seen from rising ground looking down through a village to a distant plain, with a repoussoir device of a clump of vegetation and a palm tree marking off the composition to the right.  The present picture can be dated circa 1670-5.

To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Frans Post's work currently being prepared by Pedro and Bia Corrêa do Lago, as no. 158.