1836 · Native Peoples
Portrait of a Member of the Maxuruna Amazon Tribe by Karl Joseph Brodtmann, 1836
$415
€370 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1836
- Kind
- Native Peoples
- Size
- 32.5 × 26 cm (12.8 × 10.2 in)
- Period
- The Early Republic
- Places
- Brazil
- Reference
- BG-13176-10
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
A Maxuruna man from the Amazon forests, in an original lithograph credited to Karl Joseph Brodtmann, 1836. The plate is numbered "Pl. 10" at the upper right and titled "Maxuruna" beneath the portrait, and the draftsman's and lithographer's credits appear in the lower margin. The sheet is printed in black and gray tones on cream paper.
The man is shown full face and bare-chested, as a bust in an oval of shading. His hair is long at the sides and shaved or cut away around a dark central tuft on the crown. His face is fitted with a remarkable set of ornaments: white discs sit in the cheeks on either side of the nose, a further disc at the lower lip, and large plugs in the ears. Long white-tipped feathers are fixed to the corners of the mouth and sweep outward past the shoulders, and fine lines of marking cross the forehead and cheeks.
The detail is concentrated on the face, with the ornaments drawn in sharp contrast against the softly shaded skin. The Maxuruna, also written Mayoruna, lived in the upper Amazon, and the plate is typical of the careful head studies that early lithography made possible for ethnographic works.
