Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste de Clarac

On his return to Paris he was appointed successor to Visconti as keeper of the Musee des Antiques.

[2] Highly talented at drawing, he accompanied the diplomatic mission of the Duke of Luxemburg, extraordinary ambassador to king Louis XVIII, to Brazil.

[1] On the shores of the Paraîbo do Sul, in the woods of Rio Bonito to the north of Rio de Janeiro, he made several signed croquis, and once he was back in Europe worked them up into a large watercolour of the untouched and primitive forest interior of Brazil.

The famous naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who had in his "Essay on the Geography of Plants" demanded that artists go to the New World and paint the richness of its vegetation, bought the work due to "its organic sense of the detail emanating from the totality of nature".

It was acquired by the Louvre's "département des Arts graphiques" in 2004, and in 2005 a special exhibition was centred on it.