Eckhout, Albert (c. 1610–c. 1665)

Albert Eckhout (b. ca. 1610; d. ca. 1665), Dutch painter, noted for his portraits of the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of Brazil. Eckhout was born in Groningen in the Netherlands, the son of Albert Eckhout and Marryen Roeleffs. Eckhout and Frans Post were the most famous of the artists in the entourage of Johan Maurits of Nassau while he was governor-general of Dutch Brazil from 1637 to 1644. Little is known of Eckhout's training, early career, and the reasons for his appointment, and it is not known exactly when he arrived in Brazil. Because some paintings attributed to Eckhout portrayed Araucano and African peoples as well as llamas, plants, and trees, some have suggested that Eckhout might have been part of Hendrick Brouwer's expedition to Chile in 1643 or might have visited West Africa with the forces of Colonel Hans Coen that captured Elmina in 1637 or with those of Admiral Cornelis Jol and Colonel James Henderson that occupied Angola in 1641. Finally, it is uncertain when Eckhout returned to Europe or how long he remained in the service of Maurits. In any case, by 1645 Eckhout was back in Groningen. From at least 1648 to 1652 he lived in Amersfoort before moving to Dresden, where he spent ten years (1653 to 1663) as a painter at the court of the elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II. Eckhout is thought to have died in Groningen in 1665.

Relatively few of Eckhout's paintings were signed or dated. Although most were probably painted in Brazil, others were completed after his return to Europe. He seems to have made a large number of preliminary sketches while in Brazil. Moreover, other artists based their works on Eckhout's paintings and drawings. At times, it is not entirely clear which paintings are copies, which were made under his supervision, and which are his own. In addition, Eckhout's artwork was the basis for many of the woodcut illustrations of Caspar Barlaeus's Rerum per octennium in Brasilia (1647) and Johannes de Laet's Historia naturalis Brasiliae (1648). The latter included 533 woodcuts and published notes by the German naturalist, geographer, and astronomer Georg Marcgraf on the fauna and flora of Brazil, and a section on medicine by the Dutch physician Dr. Willem Piso, both of whom had served Maurits in Brazil. The basis for these woodcuts was more than 800 paintings, most of them probably by Eckhout. These works later formed part of the collection sold by Maurits to his cousin Friedrich Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg. They have survived as the Handbooks (two volumes of watercolors), the Theatri rerum naturalium Brasiliae (four volumes, mostly oil paintings), and the Miscellanea Cleyeri. Formerly housed in Berlin, these collections disappeared during World War II. In 1977 they were rediscovered in Kraków, Poland.

Probably the most famous and valuable of Eckhout's paintings are his ethnographic works. Many were done in Brazil in 1641 and 1643 for Maurits, who later gave them to another cousin, King Frederik III of Denmark. They include life-size portraits of a Tapuya (Tarairiu) man, a Tapuya woman, a Tupinambá man, a mestizo man, a mameluco woman, an African man, an African woman, and a Tapuya dance. Both Alexander von Humboldt and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil enthusiastically praised these paintings when they visited Copenhagen in 1827 and 1876, respectively. Eckhout is credited by scholars with having created the best and most numerous portraits of Brazil's plants, birds, fish, reptiles, mammals, and peoples during the first three centuries of Europe's presence there.

See alsoArt: The Colonial Era; Brazil: The Colonial Era, 1500–1808; Dutch in Colonial Brazil; Maurits, Johan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The standard study on Eckhout is Thomas Thomsen, Albert Eckhout, ein niederländischer Maler und sein Gönner Johan Maurits der Brasilianer: Ein Kulturbild aus dem 17. Jahrhundert (1938).

Valuable for its reproductions is Clarival Do Prado Valladares and Luiz Emgydio De Mello Filho, Albert Eckhout: Pintor de Maurício de Nassau no Brasil 1637–1644 (1981).

Additional Bibliography

Joppien, R. "The Dutch Vision of Brazil: Johan Maurits and his Artists." In Dutch Brazil, vol. 2, edited by E van den Boogart. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Index, 2001.

Whitehead, Peter J. P., and Marinus Boeseman. A Portrait of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Brazil: Animals, Plants, and People by the Artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau. Amersterdam: North Holland, 1989.

                                      Francis A. Dutra