Sensitive to facts not everyone wanted to see, 19th-century artists documented the daily life of a society still caught up in the perverse relationships around slavery. The population of imperial Brazil was not composed only of noblemen and dignitaries. The less visible side of the coin was the multitude of enslaved people, powerfully present in the landscapes, streets, and environments depicted in the paintings in this room. Moved by their perception of the strangeness of Brazilian life, foreign artists and travelers played a decisive role in drawing attention to the condition of people subjected to this miserable fate. They were among the first to show the world what the refined society of the time pretended not to see.

Two major perspectives guided the Germanic gaze upon the Afro-descendant and indigenous populations of Brazil. The first was abolitionism, which, although less discussed in German-speaking countries than in Britain or France, dominated European sentiment since the first decades of the 19th century.