Exhibition Landscape by José Zagalo Ilharco

Landscape is an exhibition made up of a selection of photographs from the family archive of José Zagalo Ilharco, an amateur photographer who left a significant oeuvre, few of which are known, in a valuable testimony to the landscapes of Portugal at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

José Zagalo Ilharco (Lamego, 1860 – Porto, 1910), an amateur photographer who won an international award for his image of the Souza River, devoted himself primarily to landscape photography, but also to the anthropology of spaces, an example of which are the images now unveiled of Porto and Matosinhos.

The reproductions of the best images he produced were put together in an album by his son Norberto de Melo Zagalo Ilharco in two volumes (1947) and, being the property of his heirs, are being made public in recognition of his legacy.

The selection presented at the Soares dos Reis National Museum includes, among originals and reproductions, mainly landscapes of Matosinhos, Leça da Palmeira, Porto and the Douro.

Also noteworthy among the images presented is a group of photographs taken in 1893 of the Maria Amélia velodrome, produced before its inauguration at the back of the Royal Palace of Porto, where the Soares dos Reis National Museum is currently located.

The exhibition will also include a copy of the magazine O Tripeiro (May 1946), signed with a dedication by Vasco Valente, in which an article by the then Director of the Soares dos Reis National Museum is published about the Real Velo Club do Porto, of which José Zagalo Ilharco was a founding member.