TheFrenchArtisticMission(1816)andtheArtisticSceneofRiodeJaneiro

The arrival of the so-called "French Mission," a definitive milestone of these transformations, is a memory full of controversy. For a long time, historiography credited the invitation of the French artists led by the intellectual Joachim Lebreton (1760-1819) to the Portuguese monarchs, mainly through the encouragement of the Conde da Barca (Antonio de Araújo e Azevedo, 1754-1817), an influential member of the government of Dom João VI, and the mediation of the Marquês de Marialva (Pedro José de Alcântara de Meneses Noronha Coutinho, 1775-1823). Other versions point to political problems the group of artists faced in France during the Bourbon restoration under the government of Louis XVIII, since some of them were self-declared Bonapartists.

Even with an obscure origin, we know that Lebreton wove together a long negotiation with the Portuguese to obtain the value of the tickets and draw up the plans for an academic teaching institution in the tropics. The group left France in January and arrived at the port of Rio on March 26, 1816. This initiative brought to the city a community of artists who worked directly in teaching and in the constant production of works whose main themes were urban life and the Rio de Janeiro landscape.

Image description: This is a painting depicting a coastal scene during sunset. On the left side, we see a row of houses and buildings arranged in a straight line, with a few scattered trees among them. Moving to the right, the horizon is dominated by a large rugged mountain, which stands out against the sky. In the center, several boats float on the river, with a few figures at their bows. The sky displays shades of yellow and blue, suggesting the moment of sunset.

The names that made up the 1816 delegation include some of those who would definitively shape our vision and imagery of Rio: the painters Jean-Baptiste Debret and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, the sculptors Auguste-Maria Taunay and François Bonrepos, the engraver Charles-Simon Pradier, the mechanic François Ovide, the blacksmith Jean-Baptiste Level, the locksmith Magliori Enout, the tanners Pelite and Fabre, the carpenters Louis Jean and Hyppolite Roy, and the architects Louis Uerier, Charles Levasseur, and Auguste Henri Victor Grandjean de Montigny.

Image description: This is a painting depicting a historical scene. On the left, a man dressed in a military uniform stands holding a dagger. He is looking at a line of people walking toward the right. The line includes adults and children, all dressed in traditional clothing. The women are wearing long, colorful dresses, while the men wear simpler garments. In the background, there is a white house with green windows.

This complete group of art professionals arrives in a city whose local artistic scene was limited to a few names that marked their era (as with painters and carvers like José de Oliveira Rosa, Leandro Joaquim, João de Sousa, Manuel da Cunha, or the great Master Valentin) and whose majority had a strong link to religious themes. Another important point in Rio's relationship with the arts during this period was the constant flow of traveling artists who came in search of new landscapes, as was the case with the English Emeric Essex Vidal, Maria Graham, Charles Landseer and Henry Chamberlain, or the Austrian Thomas Ender (a member of another rarely mentioned mission, the Austrian Mission, which accompanied the retinue of the archduchess and future empress D. Leopoldina and brought, besides Ender, names such as Johan Baptiste von Spix and Carl Friederich von Martius).

Image description: This is a black-and-white engraving. The image shows a landscape with an arched structure at the center, which appears to be an aqueduct. On the left, there is a hill with trees and vegetation. In the background, there is a city with several houses and buildings. On the right, there is another hill covered with vegetation. The sky is clear and cloudless. At the bottom of the image, there is an inscription that reads "Vue de l'aqueduc de Rio-Pauivo".

The lasting fruits of the French Mission include them as a decisive moment in the construction of knowledge, institutions, and works that still resonate in the city's life to this day.