One of the members of the artistic creation centre who, this Tuesday, visited the Soares dos Reis National Museum is Tomás Vieira*, author of two of the pieces that make up the current exhibition.

 

The exhibition includes selected pieces from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection that are related to self-representation processes and that were produced, mostly, in contexts of illness.

 

The National Museum Soares dos Reis thus provides a meeting of these works of art, inscribed in currents that go beyond the traditional ones, with others from its own collection.

 

It is intended to provide contemplation, empathy and reinforcement of the emotional link between the public and the compositions on display. It is about creating an experience of fruition, but essentially of raising awareness of the person’s inner world and its expressions.

 

According to information provided by the Portuguese Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Portugal is the country with the second highest prevalence of psychiatric illness in Europe.

 

The exhibition Portreto de La Animo Art Brut Etc., according to curator António Saint Silvestre considered “the largest Art Brut exhibition ever held in the Iberian Peninsula”, is promoted in partnership with the City Council of São João da Madeira, the Centro de Arte Oliva and the collectors António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger, with the patronage support of the Millennium bcp Foundation and Lusitânia Seguros and the institutional support of Círculo Dr. José de Figueiredo – Associação de Amigos do MNSR.

 

The exhibition will be open to the public until November 12, 2023.

*Tomás Vieira is passionate about the arts, cinema and music. He likes to paint to the sound of music, the succession of sounds is his inspiration for “doodles” and artistic compositions.

 

The colors are inspired by the musical decades you listen to, each decade has its own aesthetic. For Vieira, the 60s are a red ball, the 70s are grey, the 80s are purple, the 90s are green, the 2000s are white and from 2010 onwards the colors are neon.

 

Tomás Vieira has a keen sense of humor and appreciates the simplicity of life. He criticizes the excessive use of plastic. Family and friends are his refuge. Van Gogh and Andy Warhol are his favorite artists and Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Talking Heads are his favorite musical groups.

 

She currently attends “OficINa-Arte Bruta Inclusiva”, an artistic workshop run by the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the Santarém District Hospital.

The exhibition Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc., on display at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, is a part of this magnificent collection that brings together a core of works focused on portraits and self-portraits, in confrontation or exhibition dialogue with other pieces from the Museum’s collections.

 

The portraits painted by these artists reveal an inner figure, a particularly lively creativity and invention, as can be seen, for example, in the works of Aloïse Corbaz, Ted Gordon, James Deed, Edemund Monsiel, Aleksander Lobanov, Alessandra Michelangelo or Jaime Fernandes, one of the most outstanding names in Portuguese Art Brut.

 

Jaime Fernandes (Portugal, 1899 – 1969)

“Jaime Fernandes is unequivocally the most recognized Portuguese Art Brut/Outsider artist. However, this recognition takes place mainly outside the country, a fact that is explained either by the loss of a large part of his work, or because the remaining majority is scattered in collections abroad.

 

This obscurity has to do with facts that are not foreign to the circumstances of his isolated life, the way in which he developed his work and how it subsequently circulated: diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1938, Jaime was interned for more than three decades at Miguel Bombarda Hospital (Lisbon), where he would die in 1969.

 

According to testimonies and references made to the drawings in the hospital’s clinical records, and the letters he wrote to his wife, Jaime Fernandes unexpectedly started drawing at the age of 66, four years before his death.

 

All of his known work is made up of undated drawings, made with colored ballpoint pens on different types of paper. In them, a reduced form of figures, among which imaginary animals, human or anthropomorphic figures appear and reappear in countless variations, always drawn in a dense web of lines.

 

The letters, other writings and his drawings were filmed, after his death, by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, giving rise to the film Jaime (1974), which marked the first public moment of dissemination of the artist’s work.

 

Recalling the words of António Reis, Jaime Fernandes «had a perfect notion of the space to be occupied by drawing or painting. As he was limited by the small dimensions of the paper, many of his male figures have their arms hanging down or raised, while the animal figures have their tails hanging down. Therefore, the attitudes of the drawing are always a function of the delimitation of the paper, for which he always found a brilliant plastic solution. It is possible that they are also linked to an emotional, obsessive stereotype and to archetypes…»”.

 

Source: Centro de Arte Oliva

Fernando de Castro (Sé, 23 Nov. 1888 – Paranhos, 7 Oct. 1946) was a collector and businessman from Porto who was known for his poetic streak, manifested in his publications, his love of reading and his penchant for drawing, having created several series of caricatures.

 

Fernando de Castro lived in Rua das Flores next to his father’s shop, whose business thrived on glass, mirrors and painted paper. Between 1893-1908, the businessman embarked on the construction of a new house in Rua de Costa Cabral.

 

From an early age, Fernando de Castro grew up in an imaginary full of style figures and icons, particularly with regard to the furniture and furnishings of Costa Cabral’s house – a heritage he preserved and respected after his father’s death in 1918.

 

As an adult, he developed his cultural interests in a circle of friends linked to business and with a particular taste for the arts and letters. It was after his mother’s death in 1925 that Fernando de Castro acquired new pieces.

 

The Fernando de Castro House-Museum has been administered by the Soares dos Reis National Museum since 1952. Visits are subject to prior booking. Learn more here.

Considering that the museum of the 21st century is a powerful resource in the teaching/learning process, the Soares dos Reis National Museum sees itself as an inclusive and participatory space; a place of encounter, involvement and opportunities and a stage for discussion and reflection on heritage and difficult and controversial issues of today.

 

The Soares dos Reis National Museum’s Education Service thus aims to be a place where people are valued, providing mediation spaces that create learning, experiences and memories, with a program aimed at the entire educational community, with the aim of creating environments and spaces conducive to inspiring learning.

 

Thus, the Educational Community Program 2023/2024, to be developed between October 2023 and June 2024, aims to lay the foundations for:

 

> Building knowledge and understanding

> Acquiring skills

> Developing attitudes and values

> Manifest action, behavior and development

> Feeling satisfaction, inspiration and creativity

 

Collaboration between the Museum and the Educational Community is increasingly relevant in the teaching and learning process where everyone, individually and collectively, plays a leading role.

 

See the proposed program here: https://shorturl.at/jqrQS

 

Contacts

SOARES DOS REIS NATIONAL MUSEUM
Rua de D. Manuel II nº 44
4050-522 Porto

 

Email: se@mnsr.dgpc.pt

 

Phone: 223393770 Ext 150

To award this distinction, Tripexpert is based on articles written by travel guides, journalists, writers and other professionals linked to the field of tourism and travel, only considering content written by credible people, who provide reliable and impartial advice to travelers and visitors.

 

With more than 2,500 comments from visitors on Google and Tripadvisor platforms, the Soares dos Reis National Museum occupies the top 10 of Tripexpert attractions, with positive reviews and evaluations from recognized and accredited sources, such as Michelin Guide, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s or U.S. News & World Report.

 

According to António Ponte, Director of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, this distinction “is recognition of the work that has been carried out in recent years at the museum, and which culminated in the reopening of the Long Term Exhibition to the public”, the which has already received more than 30,000 visitors in just four months.

 

Opened on the 13th of April, and marking the full reopening of the museum, after the requalification intervention, the exhibition brings together the most important collection of Portuguese art from the 19th century. In total there are 1133 pieces that tell the history of the museum and art, spread over 27 galleries.

Naturalism was an aesthetic and artistic movement that emerged in France from 1830, with the creation of the Barbizon School and through the paintings of Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).

 

In Portugal, the naturalist and realist aesthetic of the Barbizon School was introduced by the painters Silva Porto (1850-1893) and Marques de Oliveira (1853-1927), and lasted until the 1920s.

 

The painters came into contact with this new artistic movement during their stay in France, as pensioners of the Portuguese state.

 

In 1867, the Academies of Fine Arts began awarding scholarships to students abroad. Silva Porto and Marques de Oliveira were the first recipients of scholarships in Painting.

 

They entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1873 and, in the forest of Barbizon, lived with a group of artists who followed open-air painting and focused on the effects of light on the landscape.

 

Henrique Pousão went to Paris in 1880. The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

Biographies

 

António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850 – 1893)

After completing his studies at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, he left for Paris in 1873 on a state pension to study landscape painting. In France he painted in Barbizon, the mythical birthplace of Naturalism, and in Auvers he met Daubigny, one of the masters of the movement.

 

He exhibited at the Salon in 1876 and 1878. Settling in Rome, he traveled with Marques de Oliveira to various cities in Italy.

 

In 1879 he returned to the country. The landscapes he presented at the historic exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes in 1880 introduced the naturalist aesthetic to Portugal. Around him, a group of young painters gathered for the annual “Exhibitions of Modern Paintings”, which Columbano celebrated in 1885 with the collective portrait The Lion Group.

 

In the last years of his activity, he developed a painting of regional types and customs, which would be explored in a more exuberant way by Malhoa and Carlos Reis.

 

João Marques de Oliveira (1853 – 1927)

He began his artistic training at a very young age with the private master António José da Costa, and then enrolled at the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes.

 

A classmate of Silva Porto’s, he would continue with him between 1873 and 1879 as a state pensioner abroad, Marques de Oliveira in the Historical Painting class and Silva Porto in Landscape Painting. He left for Paris at the end of 1873 and in 1874 enrolled at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.

 

Linked to historical painting through his boarding school duties and, later, his teaching, Marques de Oliveira always showed a great sensitivity to nature and landscape studies, which he tried to capture in small prints. His activity as a teacher was remarkable, bringing students into direct contact with nature, but always insisting on the quality of drawing as the basis of any work.

 

Like Silva Porto, he was one of the main elements in the introduction of naturalism in Portugal. Like Silva Porto, he was one of the main elements in the introduction of naturalism in Portugal.

The Portugal: Art and Heritage project, a partnership between Google Arts & Culture and the Ministry of Culture, through the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage, offers anyone interested, anywhere in the world, the possibility of enriching knowledge about the collections of museum spaces and national monuments.

 

Google Arts & Culture introduces the world to some of the biggest names in Portuguese painting, along with a fascinating journey through a thousand years of masterpieces that identify and honor us.

 

Through Google Arts & Culture, museum collections – including the Soares dos Reis National Museum – are accessible to any user, expanding the scope of their dissemination and knowledge.

 

The tool also opens up a wide range of opportunities for specific audiences, such as the school community, seniors or even academic researchers.

 

Launched in 2011, Google Arts & Culture is a website maintained by Google in collaboration with museums from different countries. Using Street View technology, the site offers free virtual tours of some of the world’s greatest art galleries. When “walking” through the galleries, it is also possible to view high-resolution images of selected works from each museum.

This regulation establishes the rules and visiting conditions applicable to Museums, Monuments and Palaces, organically dependent on the DGPC, setting the respective admission prices, discounts and free fees, as well as the general access conditions.

 

Free access conditions continue to be guaranteed to all citizens residing in the national territory on Sundays and holidays, which is why the rule on free access provided for in Order No. 5401/2017, published in the Diário da República on June 9th, without inhibiting the possibility of adopting a Special Ticket (“Donation Ticket”), which will be free all day and not just until 2pm.

 

This order comes into force on September 1, 2023.

The Soares dos Reis National Museum will be represented, aiming at the dissemination and promotion of publications transversal to the universe of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage.

 

The literary festival will take place from the 25th of August to the 10th of September, in the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal, and will celebrate the author Manuel António Pina.

 

Manuel António Pina thus joins a range of authors honored at the literary festival, such as Ana Luísa Amaral, Vasco Graça Moura, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Mário Cláudio, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Leonor de Almeida, José Mário Branco , Júlio Dinis, with the attribution of a linden tree in the Crystal Palace Gardens.

 

The Soares dos Reis National Museum will be represented at the event, which is an excellent opportunity to purchase books with discounts on the cover price.

 

“Pina Germano” exhibition open until January 2024

 

Through letters, documents and photographs, the exhibition “Pina Germano” – which remains at the Almeida Garrett Municipal Library until January 2024 – portrays the friendship between Manuel António Pina and Germano Silva, a storyteller from the city that brought them together.

 

Based on memoirs, epistles, photographs and other documents, it presents the great story of friendship, love and correspondence in Porto today: the story that connected (and still does) the poet and journalist Manuel António Pina (disappeared in 2012) to fellow journalist and local historian, Germano Silva.

The 2nd Happiness Camp aims to bring together 6,000 people of 12 nationalities at Alfândega do Porto to promote happiness in all its aspects. Through promotional activities to be held in the Bolhão Market in the days leading up to the event, participants will be given the chance to visit the Soares dos Reis National Museum, at the particular moment when the current temporary exhibition Portreto de La Animo Art Brut Etc. is being held.

 

Organised by the Lionesa Business Hub, Happiness Camp is the largest conference dedicated to corporate happiness in Europe. Companies, professionals, students, holidaymakers or anyone with an interest in the subject come together to share knowledge and best practices, raise awareness and create a supportive community.

 

The Happiness Camp will present in Porto the “Dopamine Hub”, a sensory journey of artistic interventions that aims to stimulate the production of dopamine in the participants. The concept is new in Portugal, but popular in cities like London or New York.

 

The role of museums in Mental Health

Data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that, by 2030, depression is expected to become the most common disease in the world, affecting more people than any other health problem.

 

The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health and the extent of the current psychological suffering of the Portuguese are translated into worrying values. According to information provided by the Portuguese Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Portugal is the country with the second highest prevalence of psychiatric illness in Europe.

 

Raising awareness of the growing problem, alerting and raising awareness of the need to extend the debate on mental illness to the public sphere, connecting the scientific community and citizens, is a pressing need that calls across all sectors of society, including museums.

 

It is in this context that the Soares dos Reis National Museum has been carrying out several actions within the “Art & Health” programmatic axis.

 

The “Portreto de la Animo” exhibition and parallel activities are the focus of this program in 2023, continuing with a cultural offer aimed at minimizing the impact of the disease, increasing self-confidence and well-being, enabling the construction of a safe environment, alleviating the suffering and reducing the anguish of the people who participate in them.

 

The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo” includes selected pieces from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection that relate to processes of self-representation and that were produced, mostly, in contexts of illness. The Soares dos Reis National Museum is thus able to bring together these works of art, inscribed in currents that go beyond the traditional ones, with others from its own collection.

 

The aim is to encourage contemplation, empathy and strengthen the emotional bond between the public and the compositions on display. It’s about creating an experience of enjoyment, but essentially of awareness of the person’s inner world and its expressions.

As part of the Saturday Encounters programme, the Soares dos Reis National Museum proposes a concert by the Duo Spiritus Filum, on September 16th, at 7 pm. The event has free entry, subject to space capacity.

 

Leonor Maia, the harpist, and Francisco Barbosa, the flutist, make up the Duo Spiritus Filum. The two met in Vienna, while participating in musical projects, and have since played in several concert halls in Portugal, Austria and Germany. This year, they participated in the International Harp Festival in Brazil.

 

The Duo Spiritus Filum project consists of a musical journey, based on Classicism, mainly with works originally composed for harp and flute, which demonstrates the progression and evolution of music in different periods in the history of music.

 

The second movement of Mozart’s concerto for harp and flute and orchestra is extremely important to highlight a work from the classical period, composed by one of the greatest composers in history, who chose these two instruments as soloists and presented them together, beginning a long tradition for this duo formation.

 

This musical journey includes several relevant composers from different periods and musical styles, such as Fauré and Massenet and ends with Lex Van Delden, a contemporary Dutch composer, survivor of the Second World War, who composed several important works for harp and flute and received numerous awards for his his compositions; and Piazzolla, a composer known to everyone and who brings a different style, tango rhythms and jazz influences to this program.

Between 1866 and 1869, he exhibited his first works at the 9th and 10th Triennial Exhibition of the Porto Academy of Fine Arts. On October 13, 1869, he attended the Historical Painting course, in which he distinguished himself as one of the best students of João António Correia.

 

In 1873, he went to Paris with his colleague Silva Porto, as a pensioner in the Historical Painting class, while his brother Joaquim Marques da Silva Oliveira also pursued an artistic career, attending the Porto Academy of Fine Arts.

 

In Paris, Marques de Oliveira continued his studies at the National School of Fine Arts with professors Alexandre Cabanel and M. Yvon and had the opportunity to come into contact with some pictorial movements, such as the naturalism of the Barbizon School and Impressionism, and to visit study in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. His works from this period were, on several occasions, awarded with medals and honorable mentions. As a final test of the boarding school, he presented the painting Cephalus and Procris (illustrative image of the article).

 

On their return to Portugal in 1879, at a turbulent time in Porto’s artistic milieu, dominated by the heated debate on academic reform and the teaching of Fine Arts, Marques de Oliveira e Silva Porto introduced Outdoor Painting in Portugal and were named Academics of Merit from the Porto Academy of Fine Arts.

 

In this context, in Porto, in 1880, the Centro Artístico Portuense emerged, an association of artists who sought the progress of the arts in Portugal. As in Lisbon Silva Porto intended to launch the Grupo de Leão (Group of the Lion). In the first election for the direction of this institution, the sculptor Soares dos Reis assumed the presidency and Marques de Oliveira the vice-presidency, also integrating the technical council. In this capacity, he organized an acclaimed exhibition, entitled “Bazar do Centro Artístico Portuense”, which took place in the former Palácio de Cristal, between March 27 and April 1881.

 

By decree of May 26, 1911, the Academies of Fine Arts gave rise to three Art and Archeology Councils, with the Porto District (the 3rd) being responsible for the Portuense Museum, which then became known as the Soares dos Reis Museum.

 

In 1913 he left his position as director of the Porto School of Fine Arts to take on the role of director of the Soares dos Reis Museum, maintaining, however, his positions in the Art and Archeology Council. In 1926 he was forced to abandon teaching, as he had exceeded the age limit permitted by the new law, but also for health reasons. He died in Porto on October 9, 1927.

As part of the proposed program for the Visits at the right time, on the 30th of August, at 3 pm, a guided tour of the Noble Floor of the Palácio dos Carrancas will take place.

 

Over the years of use, the occupation of the space has undergone changes, due to the mobility of the family and the frequent existence of guests.

 

However, some principles of use of the various floors can be outlined.

 

On the first floor we find the large entrance hall around which the warehouses, stables and stables were distributed.

 

The middle floor was used by the family, and the main floor was reserved for the important people who stayed here.

 

The top floor should have been reserved for servants, and the factory workshops and perhaps the kitchen occupied the two wings that surrounded the interior garden.

 

The Palácio dos Carrancas was built in 1795 by the Morais e Castro family, descendants of New Christians, belonging to the Porto bourgeoisie and who became rich with the Fábrica de Fio de Fio de Prata installed here. The building, with a manufacturing unit and residence, witnessed and was the scene of social, military and political events throughout the 19th century.

 

Markedly urban and following the Neoclassical style, which was then installed in Porto, the Palace had a unique character in the context of private construction. Everything points to the intervention of municipal architects Joaquim da Costa Lima Sampaio and José Francisco de Paiva. The façade, with great clarity of design, divided the building into two horizontal bodies.

 

The distribution followed the hierarchy of the old regime and the architecture treaties: noble floor, enclosed courtyard with a raised wall, separation of manufactures and workers and the farmhouse set back. Luxury asserted itself in the interior spaces, namely on the main floor, with a grandiose Dining Room and the Music Room still remaining from that period.

 

The grandeur of the building associated it with the scene of major political-military events in the city. For example, during the first French invasion, it was considered a strategic location and occupied by Marshal Soult. Shortly afterwards, his successor in the city’s military command, head of the liberating army, General Arthur Wellesley, settled here.

The program continues in September with emphasis on a Robertos Theater show by Companhia Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora on September 2nd, a cyanotype workshop on September 9th and a workshop on preventive conservation of ceramic objects.

 

Also in September, the parallel program of the temporary exhibition will be presented. Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc., an exhibition open until November 12th that brings together portraits and self-portraits from the collection of the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis with those from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, one of the most important and extensive private collections of Brute Art in the world in storage at the Centro de Olive Art.

 

 

Opening hours | Tuesday to Sunday | 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Until September 30, 2023, the Museum has extended opening hours on Thursdays, between 6pm and 8pm, with free entry.

The number of visitors registered since April suggests that in 2023 the total number of entries from last year will be greatly exceeded (44,166 visitors in 2022).

 

It should be noted that, from the beginning of the year until the end of July, the Soares dos Reis National Museum has already registered a total of 43,387 visitors, of which 34.5% are foreigners.

 

With a history of almost 200 years, the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis – the first public art museum in the country – has been repositioning itself, now presenting a new look at its collections.

 

The new Long Term Exhibition proposes a way with two parallel and complementary readings. A narrative reflects the history of the museum and the way in which the collections were integrated. Another one values ​​artists and their work. Another values artists and their works.

 

About the Soares dos Reis National Museum

The Soares dos Reis National Museum has its origins in the Museum of Paintings and Prints and other objects of Fine Arts, created in 1833 by D. Pedro IV of Portugal, first Emperor of Brazil, to safeguard assets kidnapped from absolutists and convents abandoned in the civil war (1832-34).

 

With the extinction of religious orders, works were collected, among others, in the monasteries of Tibães and Santa Cruz de Coimbra. With the extinction of religious orders, works were collected, among others, in the monasteries of Tibães and Santa Cruz de Coimbra.

 

In 1839, he became the director of the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes, which promoted a series of exhibitions in which notable artists such as Soares dos Reis, Silva Porto, Marques de Oliveira and Henrique Pousão were awarded prizes, in successive generations of masters and disciples.

 

With the proclamation of the Republic, it was renamed Museu Soares dos Reis in memory of one of the most prominent names in Portuguese Art. In 1932, it became a National Museum, a time marked by a significant reorganization by Vasco Valente, through the incorporation of objects from the Paço Episcopal do Porto (Mitra) and the Industrial Museum, as well as the deposit of the collections of the extinct Municipal Museum. This is followed, in 1940, by the installation of the Museum in the Palácio dos Carrancas, where it still remains.

As part of the program proposed for the Visits at the Right Time, a guided tour will take place on August 25th, at 3 pm, to the gallery dedicated to the works of Henrique Pousão, with emphasis on the works classified as National Treasure.

 

Henrique Pousão was born on January 1, 1859, in Vila Viçosa, where he would also die, aged 25.

 

He entered the Porto Academy of Fine Arts, having established himself as a painter of the first naturalist generation, and was a state pensioner in France and Italy.

 

His work is strongly represented in the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, where the works “White Houses of Capri”, “Lady Dressed in Black” and “Windows of Blue Blinds”, all classified as national treasures, can be found.

 

The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)

From an early age, his family recognized his talent, manifested mainly in pencil portraits. At the age of 10, he moved to Barcelos and, in 1872, settled in Porto. It was in this city that he attended the atelier of the painter António José da Costa to prepare for admission to the Porto Academy of Fine Arts (1872). Greatly influenced by Marques de Oliveira, who returned from Paris in 1879, Pousão won the pensioner competition, arriving in Paris at the end of 1880, accompanied by Sousa Pinto (1856 – 1939).

 

In Spain, he had already visited the Prado Museum and before joining Cabanel and Yvon’s studio, he also visited art galleries and museums in Paris, and discovered Impressionism, especially in 1881 in the French region of Puy-de-Dômes, village of Saint-Sauves.

 

That year, he moved to Rome, where he rented a studio and, in 1882, produced significant works, also in Naples and Capri. Landscapes with a poetic and vibrant chromaticism, in exercises of capturing light, genre paintings such as Cecília (MNSR), and portraits, with Lady Vestida de Preto (MNSR), created in Paris, reveal their modernity, unusual in the artistic panorama Portuguese. Victimized at the age of 25 by tuberculosis, his work acquired importance decades later.

he Soares dos Reis National Museum, housed in an 18th-century building known as Carrancas Palace, was the object of a thorough renovation and expansion, according to a project by architect Fernando Távora.

 

Fernando Távora started the remodeling projects and works in 1988, divided into seven phases and each covering different wings of the Museum: the permanent exhibition galleries, the management building, the educational service, the cafeteria, the Noble Floor, the reserves, the extension for temporary exhibitions, the auditorium and the Rainha Dona Amélia Garden.

Fernando Távora (born August 25, 1923) is the author of structuring works of the architecture process in Portugal, among which stand out the Residential Unit of Ramalde (1952-60), the house of Ofir (1957-58), the Market in Vila da Feira (1954-59), the Municipal Park of Quinta da Conceição in Matosinhos, the Cedro School in Vila Nova de Gaia (1958-60), the Municipal Building in Aveiro (1963-67), the Pousada do Convent of Sta. Marinha da Costa in Guimarães (1972-85) which received the National Prize for Architecture (1988), Amphitheater of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra (1993-2000), Extension of the Assembly of the Republic, in Lisbon (1994) -99).

 

Távora was also distinguished with the Architecture Prize from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Europa Nostra prize (for the house on Rua Nova in Guimarães), the Tourism and Heritage Prize 85 and the career prize from the 1st Biennial of Architecture and Engineering Iberoamericana de Madrid, in 1998. They awarded him the Order of Sant’Iago de Espada, the gold medal of the city of Porto, the gold medal of the city of Guimarães, the gold medal of the city of Viana do Castelo, the medal of gold from the city of Matosinhos.

 

Fernando Luís Cardoso Meneses de Tavares e Távora (1923-2005) received a degree in architecture from the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1950. Having become an assistant at this school, in 1962 he was invited to become Professor after taking tests to become Associate Professor at the Superior School of Fine Arts of Porto. He was chairman of the Installation Committee of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, of which he was Full Professor.

 

Check the Centenary Celebrations program here

The Soares dos Reis National Museum hosts, on September 9th, two photographic printing workshops in Cianotipia. The sessions take place at 10:30 am and 2:30 pm, lasting two hours each.

 

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process discovered in 1842 by scientist and astronomer John Herschel. It was botanist and photographer Anna Atkins who explored the process to print her first book “Photographs of British Algae: cyanotype impressions”, considered the first photography book in history.

 

The proposal for this workshop is to build a kind of collective herbarium printed in cyanotypes which, while being created, will be hung to dry in the garden, bringing together all the cyanotypes produced during the workshop, thus setting up a temporary exhibition outside the museum. . Os participantes levarão para casa os seus cianotipos.

 

The workshop will be led by Margarida Ribeiro, graduated in Audiovisual Communication Technology (IPP/ESMAE), with a specialization in Photography. He has developed training projects with different educational services exploring alternative photographic techniques. Develops photographic projects in the areas of music, theater, circus, performing arts and fashion.

The Soares dos Reis National Museum hosts, on the 2nd of September, at 3 pm, the Mandrágora Theater and Puppet Company, for the presentation of two Robertos Theater shows, for the whole family.

 

“O Barbeiro Diabólico”
Rosa and Roberto are getting married, but to do so he will have to go to the barber.
Once shaved he refuses to pay and after a fight he kills the barber. The priest celebrates the funeral, but the policeman comes to arrest Roberto, who also offers him the same fate. Behold, the devil appears, who, deceived by Roberto, has the same end as the previous ones. Soon death appears and comes to take him, but more skillful than destiny, Roberto overcomes death itself!!!

 

“O Castelo dos Fantasmas”
Prisoner in the castle tower, Rosa awaits Roberto’s help, but to get there, Roberto will have to overcome the crocodile, face the giant that inhabits the castle and finally face the ghosts that inhabit it! Only by showing yourself capable of going through these trials will you be able to reach your Rose!

 

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora is a professional puppet theater company, founded in 2002, with artistic direction by Clara Ribeiro and Filipa Mesquita and plastic direction by enVide neFelibata.

 

The Company has established itself as a structure for contemporary artistic creation, through dozens of show proposals presented nationally and internationally, whether its own creations or in collaboration with other structures and cultural entities.

In 1894, when the bicycle was becoming an urban social phenomenon, D. Carlos authorized the Real Velo Clube to build a track for cyclists in the backyard of his Palace, now the Soares dos Reis National Museum.

 

What remains of this velodrome will be the theme of the Meeting in the Garden scheduled for August 24th, at 6 pm. The initiative is part of the Thursdays out of hours program which, until the end of September, proposes different activities during extended and free hours every Thursday, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

 

Inaugurated in 1894, the Maria Amélia velodrome, of which significant traces still remain, came to respond to the growing enthusiasm that the elite of Porto at the end of the 19th century felt for bicycles.

 

It was one of the city’s first sporting venues and was also home to two tennis courts.

 

Opened in what was then a small forest and vegetable garden, given by King Carlos to the Velo Club do Porto Association, the velodrome was located at the back of the neoclassical Palácio dos Carrancas, built in 1795 by the Morais e Castro family and which, acquired in 1861 by King Pedro V, became the official residence of the royal family when they traveled to Porto.

 

Later, in 1940, it was converted into the Soares dos Reis National Museum. The name of the velodrome comes from the name of King Carlos I’s wife: Queen Dona Amélia.

 

Currently on display in the Museum Garden (former velodrome) are stone objects linked to the history of the city of Porto. The vast majority of these objects come from the demolition of buildings (convents or chapels), fountains and walls, which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the city’s urban growth.

Comprising around 150 works by 99 artists, the exhibition also includes several pieces from the Soares dos Reis National Museum collection, placed in dialogue with pieces from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, such as the Reliquary bust of St Pantaleon; the Mortuary Mask of Soares dos Reis, by José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes; Spittoon, by Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro and the oil Mother and Daughter, by Sarah Afonso; among others.

 

Initiated in the 1980s, the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, on deposit at the Centro de Arte Oliva, comprises a large collection of works of Brut Art/Outsider Art, being one of the most important and extensive private collections in the world and counting on a large number of recognized authors.

 

Inspired by the journey initiated by Jean Dubuffet, a pioneer in the collection of these artistic productions, the two collectors have put together a set of works that become reports of the unconscious and involuntarily assume subversive aspects in the face of the discourse of the norm and the established order.

 

They question the limits of reason through different coded messages, formulas, invented figures and secret codes.

 

The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo“ is an excerpt from this magnificent collection that brings together a nucleus of works focused on portraits and self-portraits.

 

The portraits reveal an inner figure, a particularly lively creativity and invention, as can be seen in the works of Aloïse Corbaz, Ted Gordon, James Deed, Edemund Monsiel, Aleksander Lobanov, Alessandra Michelangelo or the Portuguese Jaime Fernandes, among others. Many of them seem to be self-portraits that claim an existence that these artists were and felt deprived of.

 

The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo”, according to curator António Saint Silvestre considered “the largest exhibition of Brute Art ever held in the Iberian Peninsula”, is promoted in partnership with the São João da Madeira City Council, the Centro de Arte Oliva and collectors António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger, with patronage support from Fundação Millennium bcp and Lusitânia Seguros and institutional support from Círculo Dr. José de Figueiredo – Association of Friends of MNSR.

 

It will be open to the public until November 12, 2023.

Until the end of September, the Soares dos Reis National Museum has extended and free opening hours every Thursday, from 6pm to 8pm.

 

The initiative is part of the summer program that has been running the Museum since June, with a very diverse calendar of activities.

 

Proposals for out-of-hours Thursdays in August:

 

National Treasures from the MNSR Collection
Guided visit
August 17th, 6pm
Public | youth and adults

 

Memory and space of the Maria Amélia Velodrome
Meeting in the garden
August 24th, 6pm
Public | youth and adults

A Museum for everyone. Everyone’s look
Book presentation
August 24, 7pm
Public | youth and adults

Play of the Month – Audience Choice
Commented session
August 31, 6pm
Public | youth and adults

The Soares dos Reis National Museum presents, under the heading The Piece of the Month – The Public’s Choice, the oil on wood «Cancela Vermelha», by Silva Porto. The commented sessions take place on the 30th of August (1:30 pm) and the 31st of August (6:30 pm). Registration ongoing.

 

Red Gate
Silva Porto (1850-1893)
1878-1879
Oil on wood

 

The piece belonged to the collection of Conde do Ameal (Dr. Ayres de Campos) and was sold at the collection’s auction in 1921.

 

It is part of the Honório de Lima Donation (DHL), made in favor of the Porto City Council in 1941. Elisa Adelaide Bessa Lima, widow of Eduardo Honório de Lima, in compliance with her husband’s wishes, signed, with the Porto City Council, on May 17, 1941, a deed of donation of 21 paintings by Silva Porto.

 

The set of 21 works that constitute the Honório de Lima Donation were associated with the General Inventory of the Municipal Museum of Porto from 1938/39, the collection of which was deposited at the Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis in 1940/41.

 

António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850 – 1893)

After completing his studies at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, he left for Paris in 1873 on a state pension to study landscape painting. In France he painted in Barbizon, the mythical birthplace of Naturalism, and in Auvers he met Daubigny, one of the masters of the movement.

 

He exhibited at the Salon in 1876 and 1878. Settling in Rome, he traveled with Marques de Oliveira to various cities in Italy.

 

In 1879 he returned to the country. The landscapes he presented at the historic exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes in 1880 introduced the naturalist aesthetic to Portugal. Around him, a group of young painters gathered for the annual “Exhibitions of Modern Paintings”, which Columbano celebrated in 1885 with the collective portrait The Lion Group.

 

In the last years of his activity, he developed a painting of regional types and customs, which would be explored in a more exuberant way by Malhoa and Carlos Reis.

The Soares dos Reis National Museum has a set of 10 pieces classified as assets of national interest, also called National Treasures. A classification attributed to objects of undeniable national value for their antiquity, authenticity, creativity, exemplarity, memory, originality, rarity or uniqueness.

 

This Guided Tour is therefore an excellent opportunity to tour the galleries of the Museum’s new Long Term Exhibition, paying particular attention to the most important works.

 

List of National Treasures in MNSR

 

The Exile Strong,
António Soares dos Reis (1847-1889)
1872
Mármore de Carrara

 

Aurélia de Souza Self-portrait
Aurélia de Sousa (1866-1922)
c. 1900
Oil on canvas

 

Casas brancas de Capri
Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)
1882
Oil on canvas

 

Busto relicário de São Pantaleão
Unknown author
15th and 16th centuries
White, gilded and painted silver; nail polishes; gold, hyaline quartz

 

Crossa de báculo episcopal
Antonio Arrighi (ourives)
1740
Cast silver, chiseled; Golden

 

Conde de Ferreira
António Soares dos Reis (1847-1889)
1876
Original plaster

 

Janela das persianas azuis
Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)
1882-1883
Oil on wood

 

Senhora vestida de preto
Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)
1882
Oil on wood

 

Cruz e Galhetas
Holy Lenho cross-reliquary set and pair of eucharistic cruets
India
End of century 17th/early 18th century

 

Par de Pulseiras
Late Bronze Atlantic / 1st Iron Age – 7th / 6th (late) centuries BC
Chance find in Rocio de São Sebastião, Castro Verde, Portugal

In 1867, the Academies of Fine Arts began awarding scholarships to students abroad. Silva Porto (1850-1893) and Marques de Oliveira (1853-1927) were the first scholarship holders in Painting.

 

They entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1873 and, in the forest of Barbizon, lived with a group of artists who followed open-air painting and focused on the effects of light on the landscape.

 

Henrique Pousão went to Paris in 1880. The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

The painting of paths and streets, courtyards, houses, aspects of Paris, bears witness to his creative journey, which culminates in his stays in Rome and Capri.

 

Biographies

António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850 – 1893)

After completing his studies at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, he left for Paris in 1873 on a state pension to study landscape painting. In France he painted in Barbizon, the mythical birthplace of Naturalism, and in Auvers he met Daubigny, one of the masters of the movement.

 

He exhibited at the Salon in 1876 and 1878. Settling in Rome, he traveled with Marques de Oliveira to various cities in Italy.

 

In 1879 he returned to the country. The landscapes he presented at the historic exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes in 1880 introduced the naturalist aesthetic to Portugal. Around him, a group of young painters gathered for the annual “Exhibitions of Modern Paintings”, which Columbano celebrated in 1885 with the collective portrait The Lion Group.

 

In the last years of his activity, he developed a painting of regional types and customs, which would be explored in a more exuberant way by Malhoa and Carlos Reis.

 

João Marques de Oliveira (1853 – 1927)

He began his artistic training at a very young age with the private master António José da Costa, and then enrolled at the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes.

 

A classmate of Silva Porto’s, he would continue with him between 1873 and 1879 as a state pensioner abroad, Marques de Oliveira in the Historical Painting class and Silva Porto in Landscape Painting. He left for Paris at the end of 1873 and in 1874 enrolled at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.

 

Linked to historical painting through his boarding school duties and, later, his teaching, Marques de Oliveira always showed a great sensitivity to nature and landscape studies, which he tried to capture in small prints. His activity as a teacher was remarkable, bringing students into direct contact with nature, but always insisting on the quality of drawing as the basis of any work.

 

Like Silva Porto, he was one of the main elements in the introduction of naturalism in Portugal. Like Silva Porto, he was one of the main elements in the introduction of naturalism in Portugal.

 

Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)

From an early age, his family recognized his talent, manifested mainly in pencil portraits. At the age of 10, he moved to Barcelos and, in 1872, settled in Porto. It was in this city that he attended the atelier of the painter António José da Costa to prepare for admission to the Porto Academy of Fine Arts (1872). Greatly influenced by Marques de Oliveira, who returned from Paris in 1879, Pousão won the pensioner competition, arriving in Paris at the end of 1880, accompanied by Sousa Pinto (1856 – 1939).

 

In Spain, he had already visited the Prado Museum and before joining Cabanel and Yvon’s studio, he also visited art galleries and museums in Paris, and discovered Impressionism, especially in 1881 in the French region of Puy-de-Dômes, village of Saint-Sauves.

 

That year, he moved to Rome, where he rented a studio and, in 1882, produced significant works, also in Naples and Capri. Landscapes with a poetic and vibrant chromaticism, in exercises of capturing light, genre paintings such as Cecília (MNSR), and portraits, with Lady Vestida de Preto (MNSR), created in Paris, reveal their modernity, unusual in the artistic panorama Portuguese.

 

Victimized at the age of 25 by tuberculosis, his work acquired importance decades later.

The young participants will stand side by side with paintings and sculptures by representative Portuguese artists from the Museum’s collection, such as Artur Loureiro, José Malhoa, António Teixeira Lopes and Marques de Oliveira, and for one day they will be the Museum’s main ambassadors to Instagram followers.

 

The InstaSelfie | International Youth Day activity takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and involves capturing images in the Museum’s galleries and posting them on visitors’ Instagram accounts. The official MNSR Instagram account must be identified in their posts. At 5pm, the Museum will count the number of likes for each image and at 5.30pm prizes will be awarded in the Museum shop, honouring the winners in each of the three age groups – 12 to 17, 18 to 23 and 24 to 29.

 

International Youth Day has been celebrated in Portugal since 1999 with the aim of promoting the transformative potential of young people in society and in social, economic and environmental sustainability. The United Nations has defined the theme for the 2023 edition as “Green skills for youth: Towards a sustainable world”.

The book brings together a set of 10 short stories inspired by 10 pieces from the museum’s collection. Lamego Museum, unpublished narratives written by ten renowned names in Portuguese literature – Andréa Zamorano, Filipa Martins, João Morales, Manuela Gonzaga, Manuel da Silva Ramos, Nuno Camarneiro, Ricardo Fonseca Mota, Rita Taborda Duarte, Rui Zink and Tiago Salazar.

 

Giving form to the encounter between Literature and the Museum of Lamego, its history and its collections, the book results from the homonymous exhibition, both of which emerged from the first edition of Textemunhos, the Literary Festival, promoted by the Museum of Lamego, in October 2022 , with the aim of rehearsing greater complicity between museums and Literature.

 

In a set of initiatives designed in collaboration with programmer journalist João Morales and writer and journalist Tiago Salazar, among launches, round tables, staged readings, performances, exhibitions, theater, cinema and gastronomy, the announcement of the book, now available , in a joint edition of the Museum of Lamego and the publisher Ponto de Fuga.

Guided tour of the Aurélia de Souza AS CASAS Exhibition, by author and curator Rui Pinheiro. August 9th at 11am. Registration ongoing.

 

Based on the theme of interiority, presented in the exhibition VIDA E SGREDO Aurélia de Souza 1866-1922, this project reveals the interior spaces inhabited by the artist’s paintings. The locations where the pieces were photographed, in many cases the living rooms of private collectors, are now revealed and give a new context to the artist’s legacy.

 

The exhibition is on display until August 27th.

 

Aurélia’s houses, places where her painting lives, where, in the flow of days, looks, memories and idiosyncrasies intersect.Show a painting or photograph it. Appropriation. Distant reverence or passion, indifference or filial love, dilettantism or obsession, but always appropriation. Prolonging desire and restlessness, showing a painting, wherever and however we do it, requires a representation device, which, almost always by default, exposes and reveals us. In Aurélia’s homes there are many such “self-portraits”, insubmissive, indiscreet, treacherous at times, demanding the photographer’s attention and sensitivity at every step.

 

The photographic campaign carried out for Aurélia de Souza’s catalog raisonée, which will allow for a systematic inventory of all her work in public and private collections, was the starting point for Rui Pinheiro’s exhibition. The places where the pieces were photographed, in many cases the living rooms of private collectors, are revealed by the photographer and give a new context to the artist’s legacy. The visitor is confronted with more than 30 photographs of interior spaces that relate to paintings and drawings by Aurélia de Souza, as if proposing new stories.

 

The exhibition is sponsored by the BPI La Caixa Foundation and institutionally supported by Círculo Dr. José de Figueiredo – Friends of the Soares dos Reis National Museum.

International Youth Day has been celebrated on August 12th since 1999, following resolution 54/120 of the United Nations General Assembly, which endorsed the recommendations made by the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth that took place in Lisbon between August 8th and 12th. from 1998.

 

This date is an opportunity to highlight the young population’s vision on the issues and their initiatives. Currently, young people play a crucial role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The world has witnessed the unprecedented mobilization of young people around the world, which demonstrates the enormous potential they have to hold decision-makers accountable.