This is a monograph about the work of the nineteenth-century printmaker and painter Pedro Weingärtner. The author reviews the artist’s career, which started in a (family) lithography studio in Porto Alegre (the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul), where he received his early training in the art of printmaking. He trained as an artist, however, in Europe (Germany, France, and Italy). Weingärtner periodically showed his work in Brazil—in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as well as in his own city. In the final years of his life he returned to Porto Alegre and settled there. In his monograph, Ângelo Guido acknowledges Weingärtner as a pioneer printmaker in his home state, though he ultimately became better known as a painter in the academic style.   

This is the first book ever written about Pedro Weingärtner (1853–1929). Published to commemorate the first centenary of his birth, it was commissioned by Ado Malagoli, who at the time was the director of the Divisão de Cultura da Secretaria Estadual de Educação e Cultura do Rio Grande do Sul. In addition to being a professor (at the Instituto de Artes da Universidade Federal) and a painter, Ado Malagoli was the founder of the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul. In his introduction, Malagoli describes the monograph as the first book of any substance about the artist, and the sole source of accurate information about Weingärtner’s work. The latter was, in fact, the first painter from this state to gain national recognition and elicit high praise from the press in the major urban centers of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Following an exhibition of his work in 1910 the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo bought some of his paintings. It is clear from the names of the painter, the promoter, and the writer (Weingärtner, Malagoli, and Guido) that German and Italian immigration influenced art instruction in the southernmost state in Brazil.  

Ângelo Guido (1893–1969), who migrated from Italy and settled in Brazil, was the first art critic and historian in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and was the director of the Art Institute associated with the UFRS, the federal university, from 1959 to 1962.