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In 1499, the Spaniard Vicente Yanez Pinzon had become the first European to set foot on Brazilian soil. A year later a Portuguese, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, landed on the coast of the enormous country and took possession of it for his king. Between 1580 and 1640, Brazil - and Portugal - belonged to the Spanish world empire. Yet as early as 1624, the Dutch succeeded in taking the city of Bahia, and in the following years and decades expanded their sphere of influence, especially along the coast.
In the seventeenth century, the short-lived Dutch colony of Brazil initially experienced a remarkably objective depiction, at the hands of a team of observers trained in science, cartography drawing, and painting. The result was a unique visual report on the country and its inhabitants, flora and fauna. One of the artists involved was the landscapist Frans Post.
The Home of a "Labrador" (sugar cane planter) in Brazil is one of the forty-two canvases that Louis XIV received in 1669 from Jean-Marie de Nassau who governed Dutch brazil from 1637 to 1644. The painting formerly mistakenly was called The Village of Serinhaem (Pernambuco).
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