19th Century Brazilian Art Gallery, Brazil National Museum of Fine Arts

Probably the largest art gallery in the country, it concentrates in one space no less than the most significant authors and works produced in the 19th century in Brazil. As if that weren’t enough, it is the oldest permanent art gallery in Rio de Janeiro, because at the beginning of the 20th century, it housed a selection of the pinacoteca of the National School of Fine Arts / Ibram / Minc.

Within the immense Gallery of Brazilian Art, with 2 thousand meters² and 8 meters in height, 230 works are on display, that is, 100 more than the previous version. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, art on paper and furniture, all restored for the exhibition.

Among the highlights at the 19th Century Brazilian Art Gallery are icons of the visual arts such as “Batalha do Avaí”, by Pedro Américo (measuring 66m², date: 1872/1877); “Batalha dos Guararapes” (50m², date: 1879) and “First Mass in Brazil” (1860), both by Vitor Meireles. In addition to these monumental works, the exhibition will also show “Más Notícias”, by Rodolfo Amoedo (1895); “Descanso Modelo”, by Almeida Junior (1882), “Gioventu”, by Eliseu Visconti (1898), as well as sculptures such as “Christ and the adulterous woman”, by Rodolfo Bernadelli (1888), “O Paraíba do Sul River”, de Almeida Reis (1886) and “Allegory of the Brazilian Empire”, by Chaves Pinheiro (1872). In addition, works signed by Belmiro de Almeida, Debret, Agostinho da Mota, Taunay, Araujo Porto Alegre, Zeferino da Costa, Castagneto, Antonio Parreira, Henrique Bernardelli,

Brazilian Painting
Composed for more than 3,000 works, the Brazilian painting collection of the MNBA expressed much of the national pictorial production, beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to the contemporary.

As a direct heir to the Imperial Academy (1826 – 1889) and its successor, the National School of Fine Arts (1889 – 1965), the collection has its greatest prominence in the segment produced during the 19th century, when the official teaching of art, based on French models. Due to the comprehensive set and the relevance of its artists, the MNBA Brazilian Painting Collection is one of the most important collections of 19th century Brazilian art, a reference for researchers in Brazil and abroad. Most of the most expressive artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Vítor Meireles, Pedro Américo, José Correia de Lima, Rodolfo Amoedo, Belmiro de Almeida, Modesto Brocos, Henrique Bernardelli, Antonio Parreiras, Almeida Júnior and Eliseu Visconti – one of the precursors of Impressionism in Brazil – to name a few,

Foreign Painting
In the foreign collection, remarkable sets stand out, such as the twenty landscapes and seascapes of the pre-impressionist painter Louis-Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), donated to the National School of Fine Arts, in the twenties, by the Baroness of São Joaquim; the eight important landscapes of Pernambuco by the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artist, Frans Post (1612-1680); a wonderful collection of Italian painting from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, represented by painters such as Bartolomeo Passaroti (1529 – 1592), Giacchino Assareto (Circa 1600 – 1649), Giovanni Lanfraco (1582 – 1647), Giovanni Maria Bottala (1613 – 1644) ), Francesco Albani (1578 – 1660), Valerio Castello (1624 – 1659), Giovanni Benedeto Castiglione, II Grechetto (1609 – 1664), Francesco Cozza (1605 – 1682), Giovanni Batista Gauli, II Baciccia (1639 – 1709), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 – 1770),

This collection has gradually become well known in Europe, enthusiastic European experts.

Brazil National Museum of Fine Arts
The National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) is an art museum located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It concentrates the largest collection of works of art of the 19th century, being one of the most important museums of its kind in the country.

Located in the historical center of Rio de Janeiro in an eclectic architecture building designed in 1908 by the architect Adolfo Morales de los Rios to host the National School of Fine Arts, heir of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Fine Arts / Ibram / MinC was built during the urban upgrades carried out by Mayor Pereira Passos in what it was then the Federal Capital of the country.

Created officially in 1937 by the decree of President Getúlio Vargas, it occupies an area of 18,000 m2 and is the most important art museum in the country. It brings together a collection of seventy thousand items among paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, objects, documents and books, constituting itself as a radiating center of knowledge and dissemination of Brazilian art.

The museum’s collection began with the set of works of art brought by Dom João VI, in 1808, and was expanded throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries with the incorporation of the National School collection and other acquisitions, and today it has about 15,000 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by Brazilian and foreign artists, as well as a collection of decorative art, furniture, folk art and a set of pieces of African art.

The bicentennial Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts originated from three distinct sets of works: the paintings brought by Joaquim Lebreton, head of the French Artistic Mission, who arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1816; the works belonging to or produced here by members of the Mission, among them Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Jean-Batiste Debret, Grandjean de Montigny, Charles Pradier and the Ferrez brothers; and the pieces of the Collection D. João VI, left by him in Brazil when returning to Portugal in 1821. These collections have been enriched by important donations and acquisitions, such as the bust of Antínoo, a rare marble archaeological piece donated by the Empress D. Teresa Cristina to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1880.