Arcadópolis
A Difficult Errand
What you see
The boy fills the foreground, standing on a stone slab before a door, head bowed and hands busy with the brim of his dark hat. Behind him on the left, a woman in a red shawl leans against the frame and looks down at him with a serious expression. Between them lies a dark gap, the entrance to the house.
The tones are earthy and gray, and the white of the boy's shirt gathers the light. On the right, the wall has lost its plaster, showing the stones beneath. Look at the boy's fingers fiddling with the hat, his rolled-up trousers, and the woman's hand resting on the green door.
About 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.
More by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior
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