José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior

José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior was born in 1850 in Itu, in inland São Paulo, and studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and then, with a scholarship from Emperor Pedro II, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from 1876 to 1882. Back in Brazil he devoted himself more and more to the “caipira”, the country people of São Paulo, whom he painted in simple scenes of work and rest under the strong inland light. His “Caipira Cutting Tobacco” had so many imitators that Monteiro Lobato joked that future historians would think Brazilians of the time did nothing but cut tobacco. He died in Piracicaba in 1899.