Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jean-Baptiste Debret was a French painter born on the 18th of April 1768 who traveled to Brazil in 1816 as part of the French Artistic Mission. He spent fifteen years documenting Brazilian society, producing lithographs of street life, slavery, Indigenous peoples, and imperial ceremonies that form one of the most significant visual records of early nineteenth-century Brazil. He died in Paris on the 28th of June 1848.
The French Artistic Mission was a group of Bonapartist French artists and artisans who traveled to Rio de Janeiro in March 1816 under the auspices of King Dom Joao VI and the Count of Barca. Their purpose was to establish an arts and crafts school, the Escola Real de Artes e Oficios, which later became the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes under Emperor Dom Pedro I.
Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil is a three-volume series of engravings published by Debret between 1834 and 1839. The full title translates as A Picturesque and Historic Voyage to Brazil, or the Sojourn of a French Artist in Brazil. Despite its historical importance as a record of Brazilian society from 1816 to 1831, the work was not a commercial success during Debret's lifetime.
Debret produced the sketches for the first flag of independent Brazil, collaborating with Jose Bonifacio. The first designs were tested in 1821. The imperial flag differed from today's design: it featured a green neoclassical shield with the cross of the Order of Christ and an armillary sphere, surrounded by branches bearing coffee fruit and tobacco, with the imperial crown above.
Debret studied under Jacques-Louis David at the French Academy of Fine Arts; the two were related. He accompanied David to Rome in the 1780s and made his debut at the 1798 Salon des Beaux Arts, winning the second prize. Later in life Debret produced lithographs of David's paintings to support himself financially.
Between 1816 and 1831, Debret sketched street scenes, local costumes, and social relations across Brazilian society, with particular focus on the slavery of Black Brazilians and the Indigenous peoples of the country. This work, alongside that of German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, constitutes a major graphic archive of early nineteenth-century Brazilian life.