Une vente d'esclaves, à Rio-de-Janeiro

Description

"A Sale of Slaves, in Rio de Janeiro" (caption translation). This engraving shows a the auctioneer standing on a chair with his hammer, while a prospective buyer examines an enslaved woman with a child clinging to her arm. In the background, are three other enslaved people about to be auctioned. Various material goods, including household furniture and musical instruments, are being sold at the same auction. François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882), or François Thérèse Biard, was a French painter and traveler. Around 1858, he spent two years in Brazil working at the court of Emperor Pedro II. From Rio de Janeiro, he made several excursions into the interior, where he painted some of the earliest images of indigenous people in the Amazon. On his return to France, he went through North America and painted scenes depicting slavery. He published around 180 engravings and was sometimes criticized for inserting humour in otherwise serious paintings. See Ana Lucia Araujo, Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015).

Source

François-Auguste Biard, Deux Annèes au Brèsil (Paris: Hachette, 1862), p. 95.

Language

French

Rights

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Identifier

Biard04

Spatial Coverage

South America--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro

Item sets

Slave Sales & Auctions: African Coast & the Americas

Citation

"Une vente d'esclaves, à Rio-de-Janeiro", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed September 30, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2427
"A Sale of Slaves, in Rio de Janeiro" (caption translation). This engraving shows a the auctioneer standing on a chair with his hammer, while a prospective buyer examines an enslaved woman with a child clinging to her arm. In the background, are three other enslaved people about to be auctioned. Various material goods, including household furniture and musical instruments, are being sold at the same auction. François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882), or François Thérèse Biard, was a French painter and traveler. Around 1858, he spent two years in Brazil working at the court of Emperor Pedro II. From Rio de Janeiro, he made several excursions into the interior, where he painted some of the earliest images of indigenous people in the Amazon. On his return to France, he went through North America and painted scenes depicting slavery. He published around 180 engravings and was sometimes criticized for inserting humour in otherwise serious paintings. See Ana Lucia Araujo, Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015).
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