Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
Caipira Cutting Tobacco
Almeida Júnior · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (1850–1899)
- Date
- 1893
- Dimensions
- 202 x 141 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
This life-size painting shows a barefoot countryman sitting on the step of a rough mud-and-wattle house, cutting tobacco from a roll with a knife to make a cigarette. He wears simple, worn clothes and squints in the bright sunlight.
A closer look
A caipira is a rural inhabitant of the interior of São Paulo state, and Almeida Júnior was one of the first Brazilian artists to paint these ordinary people with dignity and on a monumental scale, a subject previously reserved for heroes and saints. The intense tropical light, falling on the man's sunburnt skin, the cracked wall and the dusty ground, is rendered with careful realism. The man is absorbed in his slow, everyday task, an image of patience and rootedness in the land. The work became an icon of Brazilian national identity.