The Problem of Race in Brazilian Painting, c. 1850-1920.

The traditional appraisal that artists in Brazil were unable or unwilling to depict black subjects during the Imperial and early Republican periods is at odds with much of what was actually produced. Following the success of abolitionist imagery in the mid-nineteenth century, a number of visual artists in Brazil actively established a critical discourse that linked race and inequality as early as the 1890s, two decades before such critiques became widespread in literature and the social sciences. Specific works by Eliseu Visconti, Antonio Ferrigno and Modesto Brocos are singled out and examined, in this respect. The final section of the essay examines the issue of self-representation, focusing on the work of Arthur Timótheo da Costa in the 1900s and 1910s. A marked contrast exists between the relatively neglected efforts of these artists and the much lauded drive of Brazilian modernism to embrace the theme of race, after 1922.