Retrato de Antonio Paes de Barros (Primeiro Barão de Piracicaba)

José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior was the first major Brazilian painter to develop a distinctly Brazilian subject matter and style, breaking from the European academic conventions that dominated Brazilian painting through the Imperial period. This 1876 portrait of Antonio Paes de Barros, the First Baron of Piracicaba, is an early work from before his mature Brazilian phase — at this time Almeida Júnior was pursuing conventional academic portraiture of the Brazilian elite. The Ipiranga Museum in São Paulo holds this work as part of its collection of Brazilian historical documentation, recording the political and economic elite of the Brazilian Empire in its final decades.

The portrait follows conventional 19th-century academic portrait procedures — careful likeness, dignified pose, attention to the costume and accessories of social rank. Almeida Júnior's early academic training is evident in the controlled, smoothly modeled handling.