Albert Eckhout : A Dutch Artist in Brazil is a detailed, richly illustrated volume about the life and work of the little-known painter Albert Eckhout (C. 1610-1666). Together with the Haarlem lanscape painter Frans Post (c. 1612-1680), Eckhout worked in Brazil at the court of Johan Maurits (1604-1679), count of Nassau-Siegen. The military leader Johan Maurits, who is also known for having comissioned the Mauritshuis in The Hague, served from 1636 to 1644 as governator-general of the Dutch colony in northeast Brazil. As an enlightend ruler, he was not interseted solely in the colony's profitability, but also in its people and its plant and animal life.
Eckhout is known primarily as the painter of a series of scenes depicting the inhabitants of Brazil and a set of 12 still lifes, all of which have been in Copenhagen since 1654, when Johan Maurits made a gift of them to King Frederik III of Denmark. But Eckhout was also an accomplished draughtsman. His drawings of Brazilian people, plants, and animals testify to his superb powers of observation. What is more, his drawings - like his paintings - constitute a unique source about seventeenth-century Brazil.