Today a delegation from the Met Museum – The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York visited the Soares dos Reis National Museum. In addition to members of the Met Museum, the group included alumni from Harvard and Chicago Universities.
After being received, in a welcome session, by António Ponte, Director of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, participants had the opportunity to learn more about the self-portrait by José Tagarro, in a session led by Rika Burnham, Coordinator from the Met Museum Education Service.
In this double self-portrait, dated 1929, the artist paints himself in the very act of representation. Game of contrary times premeditatedly implemented between the two universes in which the artist moved — that of drawing and that of painting — with evident reinforcement of the first, since the painted portrait is here the moment of passage and the drawing, refined in rigor and in synthesis, the final artwork.
This is a unique painting that José Tagarro carried out at the end of his life prematurely interrupted. It is considered one of the most revealing of the artist’s understanding of his own production and career and one of the most striking self-portraits in Portuguese art.
The delegation from the Met Museum – The Metropolitan Museum of Art continued its guided visit to the Soares dos Reis National Museum, visiting the Romanticism and Naturalism rooms, acquiring knowledge about the movement of Portuguese artists and their training paths abroad, as well as about the importance of commercial and cultural exchanges between the Portuguese and the people of the new continents.