Johann Moritz Rugendas Collection

Background on Johann Moritz Rugendas

Johann Moritz Rugendas (also known as Juan Mauricio Rugendas) was among the most influential European artists to travel in South America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in Augsburg (present-day Germany) on Mar. 29, 1802, and raised in a family of renowned painters and engravers, Rugendas was provided with a strong academic artistic foundation, training in father's art school and studying under the painter Albrecht Adam and then under Lorenz Quaglio at the Academy of Arts in Munich.

Although only in his late teens, Rugendas grew weary of academic study, and when the Russian naturalist Georg Heinrich Freiherr von Langsdorff, offered an opportunity to travel into the interior of Brazil and explore the New World firsthand, Rugendas wasted little time accepting. As an illustrator accompanying Langsdorff's scientific expedition to the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais and Sao Paolo, Rugendas had a rare opportunity to immerse himself in the natural and cultural history of the country, then struggling toward independence, and although he broke with Lansgdorff and was replaced as illustrator by Adrien Taunay, he continued on his own to explore Mato Grosso, Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1825, Rugendas returned to Europe at the request of Bavarian King Max Josef, lured in part by the prospect of publishing an illustrated account of his travels. Despite the loss of a potential patron with the untimely death of the King, Rugendas succeeded in publishing the monumental four volume set, Malerische Reise in Brasilien, which appeared more or less simultaneously in French translation as Voyage pittoresque dans le Bresil (1827-1835). The one hundred published plates were acclaimed for their beauty, but also for their evocative depictions of aboriginal culture, landscapes and animals, urban scenery, and the Brazilian system of slavery.

After spending time in Paris and Italy, Rugendas returned to the Americas in 1831, traveling successively through Haiti and Mexico, adding oil paintings to his repertoire for the first time. Not simply an observer, Rugendas became caught up in failed coup against Mexican President Anastasio Bustamante, and was arrested and expelled from the country in 1834. For the next decade, traveled throughout Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, making the same careful visual documentation of his travels as always.

Upon his arrival back in Europe in 1847, Rugendas sold his drawings and paintings to King Max II of Bavaria in exchange for an annual annuity, but failing health led him to give up his art. He died at Weilheim an der Teck on May 29, 1858.