Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858)

oil on canvas

Private Collection, Germany

This painting is in beautiful state. The canvas is unlined. The paint layer is stable and has been cleaned and varnished. The retouches that have been applied are very accurate and confined to a few cracks in the upper center of the composition and in the neck of one of the Lamas in the lower left. The paint layer is unabraded and in particularly beautiful condition, given the period of the painting. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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One of the best known of the nineteenth-century traveler painters to visit Latin America was Johann Moritz Rugendas, a German artist who arrived in Brazil in 1821.  In a second trip some ten years later, Rugendas traveled to Mexico where he stayed from 1831-1834, before continuing his adventures throughout South America.

 

Rugendas returned to Europe in 1846 where he reverted to a more classical mode of painting. La Siesta belongs to this later period, in which he drew upon his memory and sketches from his travels. In La Siesta, he depicts ladies from Latin America's high society delicately fanning themselves in hammocks in the midday heat while two mestiza nursemaids tend to the sleeping infant. The figures depicted along with the tropical foliage and exotic animals, would signal the Americas (if not specifically Brazil or Mexico) to a European audience. 

 

The scene, an amalgam of various sketches made over a twenty-five year period, is less a historical snapshot than an elegant and exotic collection of impressions and images. For only in his imagination, would a tropical parrot inhabit the same environment as the llamas of the high Andean Altiplano, or would the maguey cactus of Mexico's arid regions (in the lower right corner) ever coexist in nature with the lush tropical jungle that surrounds it as a dramatic backdrop.