Árabe

Árabe — Arab — suggests that van Emelen's Brazilian sojourn brought him into contact not only with indigenous and Afro-Brazilian subjects but also with the significant Arab-Brazilian community that had been developing in São Paulo since the 1880s, when immigration from Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of the Arab world accelerated. By 1901 São Paulo had one of the most substantial Arab immigrant communities in the Americas. This portrait, painted for the Ipiranga Museum collection, documents the multicultural reality of Brazilian society at the turn of the century in a way that complements the indigenous and Afro-Brazilian portraits forming the rest of the series.

Van Emelen applies the same focused, observational approach here as in his other Brazilian portraits, with the face occupying the central pictorial interest. Any ethnographic markers in dress or accessories serve to identify the subject's cultural background within the composition's larger documentary purpose.