Coffee Gatherers in Rio, by Johann Moritz Rugendas
By Erika Kohnen

Coffee Gatherers in Rio

The painting Coffee Gatherers in Rio by Johann Moritz Rugendas has major implications for both the institution of slavery and the plantation economy of nineteenth^–century Brazil. The romanticized depiction of a plantation in this image masks the controversy that surrounded slavery. The work idealizes plantation life in order to defend and promote the system of slavery. In doing so, it speaks to the economic, political, and cultural issues that converged around the slavery question in the decades following the declaration of Brazilian independence in 1822.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, amidst continental uprisings, declarations of independence, and new social orders, Brazilians began to question many societal institutions, including slavery. Rugendas composed this painting around 1850, when Brazil declared an official end to its slave trade. However, this did not mean that slavery ceased to exist. Plantation owners and merchants had a vested economic interest in continuing the institution that drove the Brazilian agricultural machine.

At the same time, Brazil was in the process of defining itself as a new nation. Slavery and the plantation system were major components of this “step forward.” In order to hide or disguise the institution’s intrinsic inequalities and bleak historic context, elites with large land holdings and government officials put forward a more positive and romanticized image of slavery. As Skidmore, Smith and Green postulate in Modern Latin America, “In the wake of independence, romanticism became the vehicle for defining these new countries. Enthusiastic idealism about the new nations’ potential for wealth and prosperity drove this literary current.”[1]

Johann Moritz Rugendas was one such ‘enthusiastic idealist.’ The idyllic landscapes and ennobled characters depicted throughout much of his work promote an unrealistic image of cultural and economic harmony in Latin American affairs during the first half of the nineteenth century. This painting in particular is highly romanticized as is evident both in the picturesque natural background and the glamorized characters. First, the black women, presumably slaves, are wearing long dresses and are adorned with jewels. Furthermore, their exposed upper bodies give the painting an air of exoticism; their comparatively light skin and soft expressions show them as content and unthreatening. The two men resting in the shade, presumably their ‘masters,’ are both dressed in in what looks like expensive cloth, however their bare feet give the impression that they are gentlemen farmers. Their living is made off of the land through the toil of others. One stands up with his finger outstretched, directing the workers. The other sits languidly by, enjoying his wine. They are representative of the class of large landowners in Brazil that made great profits from the plantation economy through the system of slavery. This was a class that had the most to lose should slavery be abolished, for prior to 1850, wealth was derived from capital represented by slaves.[2] With the signing of the parliamentary land laws in 1850, uncertainty about the future of land ownership must have made the continuation of slavery appear the more stable choice. Thus, the idealization of this institution would have offered protection for a more “stable” future.

The romanticism of this image, however, is in conflict with the reality of the situation. The actual plantations were far less glamorous.  Slaves, viewed as human chattel, were forced into heavy labor in the sugar and coffee industries.[3] The two black men in the painting are the only individuals not portrayed in an ennobled and idyllic light. Instead, they are relegated to the shadows, their skin darker in contrast to that of the women and children joyfully working in the sun. Their clothes are those cast off by their “masters,“ and their expressions are stormy. In a way, they threaten this idealized setting. Perhaps this is reflective of the worry felt by planters and merchants of the threats to the institution of slavery. This sentiment would have been appropriate at the time the painting was produced, for recent slave uprisings and British anti-slavery sentiment were threatening to bring about significant economic loss and cultural change.

Today, the romanticism of slavery in the Johann Moritz Rugendas painting is dismissed as a false representation, a naïve view of slavery and plantation life, or perhaps a cover-up for the harsh reality of forced labor. However, it is interesting to consider how it was viewed in the time of its creation. Did the painting truly fool people into thinking that plantation life was relaxed and idyllic? Or did viewers, who would have been both Brazilian and European elites, choose to accept it in its romanticized form in order to justify the economic benefits the institution of slavery conferred upon them?

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Works Cited:

Butler, Kim D. “Slavery in the Age of Emancipation: Victims and Rebels in Brazil’s Late 19th-Century Domestic Trade.” Journal of Black Studies 42 (2011): 968-992.

Ferrer, Ada. “Talk About Haiti: The Archive and the Atlantic’s Haitian Revolution.” In Tree of liberty: cultural legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, edited by Garraway, Doris Lorraine, 21-40. United States: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

Garraway, Doris Lorraine, ed. Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

Rogers, Thomas D. “Laboring Landscapes: The Environmental, Racial, and Class Worldview of the Brazilian Northeast’s Sugar Elite, 1880s-1930s.” Luso-Brazilian Review 46:2 (2009): 22-53.

Rugendas, Johann Moritz. Coffee Gatherers in Rio. From ARTstor, http://library.artstor.org/library/printImage.jsp?imageurl=http%3A//imgserver.artstor.net/ibwa/db/ibwa_32044000229542_8b_srgb_as.fpx%3Fcell%3D400%2C400%26rgnn%3D0%2C0%2C1%2C1%26cvt%3DJPEG (accessed February 10, 2012).

Skidmore, Thomas E., Smith, Peter H., Green, James N. Modern Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

University of Massachusetts. “Rugendas, Johann Moritz, 1802-1858.” http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?p=157 Accessed February 10, 2012.

Walker, Timothy Slave Labor and Chocolate in Brazil: The Culture of Cacao Plantations in Amazonia and Bahia (17^th-19^th Centuries).” Food & Foodways, 15 (2007): 75–106.