Pedro Américo

Brazil · 1843–1905

Pedro Américo de Figueiredo e Melo was a Brazilian novelist, poet, scientist, art theorist, essayist, philosopher, politician and professor, best remembered as one of the most important academic painters in Brazil. He showed an inclination towards the arts from a young age, being considered a child prodigy. Before the age of ten, he participated as a draftsman on an expedition of naturalists through the Brazilian northeast, and received government support to study at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He furthered his artistic studies in Paris, but he also dedicated himself to science and philosophy. Soon after his return to Brazil, he began to teach at the academy and began a successful career, gaining prominence with great paintings of a civic and heroic character, inserting himself in the civilizing and modernizing program of the country fostered by emperor Pedro II, of which the Imperial Academy was the regulatory and executive arm in the artistic sphere.