The Guitar Player

Music seems to hang in the air of this painting by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, a Brazilian artist working in the late 1800s who built his name portraying the country folk of São Paulo. A man leans out through a window frame, plucking a small guitar called a viola, while a woman stands just below him with her lips parted, either singing back or waiting for her moment to reply. The crumbling plaster and rough stones of the wall make it clear these are ordinary people at a simple rural home, the kind of setting most painters of the time would have overlooked entirely.

That choice was exactly the point. Almeida Júnior was among the first to treat the Brazilian caipira, the rural common folk, as worthy of serious painting, giving their everyday moments the dignity usually reserved for kings and saints. He clearly enjoyed the little things here, from the man's battered felt hat to the woman's warm pink shawl and the gentle daylight resting on their faces. What comes through most is the flirtation, a small romance unfolding at a window with a song as the excuse. This honest affection for regular life is what earned him a lasting place in the story of Brazilian art.