Arcadópolis
Caipira Kitchen
What you see
The kitchen is large and dim, under a tiled roof held up by beams. On the left rises a domed clay oven; in the middle are an overturned wooden tub, a tall mortar and other tools. On the floor at lower right, a kneeling woman works a round sieve. At the back, an open door lets in the daylight.
Almost everything lies in shadow, in browns and ochres, and light enters through the door and small gaps in the wall and roof. Notice the ears of corn hanging from a beam, the little wooden bench on the right, and the white bird silhouetted in the bright doorway.
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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