Herrmann Rudolf Wendroth

Aventura com uma brasileira ("Adventure with a Brazilian Woman"), Wendroth's self-portrait in a woman's house. Herrmann Rudolf Wendroth was a German mercenary and amateur artist who went to Brazil in 1851 and left important visual documentation about the province of Rio Grande do Sul.

Life Very little is known about his life. He was born in Mainz, and in 1851 was hired by the Brazilian government to fight in the Platine War. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the ship Hamburg and was incorporated into the German Legion that served in the south, whose members were known by the nickname brummers (the "grumblers"). Due to military urgencies, his transfer to Rio Grande do Sul was immediate, arriving around August 8 in Rio Grande, where he met Karl von Koseritz and was arrested for drunkenness, soon leaving to Pelotas, where he was arrested again for rioting.

Because of his lack of discipline, he did not go with his troops to the Uruguayan front. By September 20, 1851, he had already disbanded from the Legion, moving on to a life as a wandering adventurer. There he prepared a memorial on the geology and mineralogy of the land, which he forwarded to the president of the province.

Wendroth went on a journey through various parts of the countryside, experiencing a series of adventures and difficulties. Since then, Wendroth's images have had a wide circulation, appearing in books, articles, and websites. Black in the pelourinho (a pillar erected in a public place, where criminals were exposed and punished). In 2020, an issue was published by the University of Lisbon's Center for Lusophone Literatures and Cultures in cooperation with the Rio-Grandense Library, with a text by Francisco das Neves Alves and Luiz Henrique Torres. For the authors:

His illustrations often reveal a satirical and jocular vein that is close to caricature, but did not fail to portray conflicting aspects of society, such as the gap between social classes, showing the different costumes, housing, and customs of the elite and the common people, and slavery, showing the blacks in their heavy work and the punishment they received. He also showed infrastructural problems of the province, such as the bad conditions of the port of Rio Grande and the precariousness of the means of transport and roads. In many images, the author becomes the protagonist of the scenes, illustrating the situations he went through, such as the time in jail, the hunting, the drinking, the incursions into the bush, a discussion with a priest, the activity as a prospector, the amorous gallantries. For Luciana da Costa Oliveira,