Frans Post

Frans Janszoon Post (17 November 1612 – 17 February 1680) was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil. In 1636 he traveled to Dutch Brazil in northeast of South America at the invitation of the governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. His works were widely collected in the Netherlands, Europe, and Brazil, with the works showing an idealized vision of Dutch colonial rule.

Biography Post was born in Haarlem and was the son of Jan Janszoon Post, a highly regarded glass painter trained in Leiden, and Francijntje Verbraken of Haarlem. His elder brother was Pieter Post, one of the most important architects of Dutch classicism. Little is known of his life before his trip to Brazil.

He was born in Haarlem circa 1612 and he most likely received his early training from his father and his elder brother.

View of Pernambuco, Brazil, c. 1637–44, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes Post won a commission at court likely through the connections of his older brother and was encouraged to travel abroad by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen. Post lived in Brazil from 1637 to 1644. He received 800 guilders for a landscape painting in the West Indies commissioned by Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, leading Larsen to believe that Post set out for the Netherlands via Africa shortly before Nassau departed Brazil. After he returned to the Netherlands, he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1646, and was appointed officer in 1656–7 and 1658. In 1650, he married Jannetje Bogaert, the daughter of Professor Salomon Bogaert of the Haarlem ‘Latijnsche School’. He had two sons, who died before his death and one daughter that did survive him, but died shortly thereafter. Unlike his Brazilian work, the figures are no longer subjects placed in the foreground; instead, they seem to become part of the landscape. Four of the six paintings completed in Brazil only have a few figures, with the exception of Porto Calvo (1639) depicting more, and The River of São Francisco (1638), which does not have any figures. While Post was in charge of documenting the land, Albert Eckhout, another one of Nassau’s artists, was in charge of documenting the native people.