“Changing the subject is one of the most difficult arts to master, the key to almost all the others.”

Johann Moritz Rugendas was a renowned German landscape painter of his time. He was particularly well-known for his work in the Americas. Inspired by Alexander von Humboldt, he sought financial support for an ambitious project of recording pictorially the life and nature of Latin America. In his word, it would be "an endeavor to truly become the illustrator of life in the New World". In 1831 he traveled first to Haiti, and then to Mexico. In Mexico, he did drawings and watercolors of Morelia, Teotihuacan, Xochimilco, and Cuernavaca. He also began to practice oil painting, with excellent results. After becoming involved in a failed coup in 1834 against Mexico's president, Anastasio Bustamante, Rugendas was incarcerated and expelled from the country.

From 1834 to 1844 he travelled to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Bolivia, and finally returned in 1845 to Rio de Janeiro. Well-accepted and feted by the court of Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, he executed portraits of several members of the royal court and participated in an artistic exposition. At the age of 44, in 1846, Rugendas departed for Europe.

His depiction of black culture in his works are widely discussed. In some images, for example the Enterro de um Negro na Bahia, Rugendas identified the dead body of a "black man with another corpse: the suffering Christ the ‘Savior’ honored by the city’s name. Catholic themes and romantic images of slavery were common themes.


An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is a fictionalized account of an eventful trip to Latin America taken by Rugendas, in search of inspiration. A painful misfortune befalls him that gives him new perspective. At this point, the writing becomes surrealist and the scenes become eerily intense as the sheer willpower of the artist allows him to continue painting.

"It was as if he had taken another step into the world of his paintings."

What I most enjoyed about this book were the descriptions of the landscape as Rugendas travels to Argentina through Chile. A must-read if you are into Latin American lit.