Arcadópolis
Caipira Cutting Tobacco
What you see
A countryman sits at the center on a log outside his house, knees apart and eyes lowered, absorbed in his hands. Behind him, the wall on the left has shed its plaster, exposing a lattice of sticks and reddish mud; on the right is a door of gray planks. The knife and the dark coil of tobacco are where everything converges.
This is a scene in full sun: light bleaches the shirt and the ground, and shadows fall short and hard. The tones are ochre, pink and gray. Keep an eye out for the big dusty feet, the shadow of a tree creeping in at lower right, and the pale scraps scattered on the ground.
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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