Adriano Sousa Lopes Leiria, 1879 – Lisbon, 1944

Adriano Sousa Lopes Leiria, 1879 – Lisbon, 1944 A Pesca 1934 Charcoal study on paper 160 x 146 cm. Exhibited: Possibly the drawing presented by Adriano Sousa Lopes in the Primeira Exposição de Arte Retrospectiva in January 1937 described as ‘Pescadores (cartão para um fresco)’. Comparative literature: ‘Vida artística. Um milagre de pintura na exposição de “frescos” de Sousa Lopes que se inaugurou hoje no Parque das Necessidades,’ in Diário de Lisboa, 26 May 1934, p. 5. A. Lopes Vieira, Catalogo da exposição de pintura a fresco de Sousa Lopes, Lisbon, Libanio da Silva Press, 1934. ‘O mestre pintor Sousa Lopes executou, a fresco, para o Palácio da Representação Nacional, três painéis cantando o louvor da pesca, do vinho e do azeite portugueses.’ in O Século, 7 Janeiro 1935, p. 1. R. dos Santos, Catalogo da exposição de pintura a fresco de Sousa Lopes, Lisbon, Libanio da Silva Press, 1962. J-A. França, O Palácio de S. Bento, Lisbon, Assembly of the Republic, 1999. M. Farinha dos Santos, "O Pintor Sousa Lopes", in Sousa Lopes. Exposição de homenagem à memória do mestre pintor Adriano de Sousa Lopes, Lisbon, Combatentes, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, p. 14-63. The present work by Adriano Sousa Lopes is a preparatory drawing for an important cycle of frescoes completed by the artist in 1935. The work formed part of the artistic decoration in a room used by members of the Government, in the then Assembleia Nacional, that was designed by Raul Lino. Sousa Lopes made a set of three frescos - for the space above the doors - which were not painted directly on the wall but had been previously created in his studio in Lisbon, in the Parque das Necessidades, and later put in place. The following year, the painter was commissioned with creating the frescoes of the Discoveries that today can be seen in the Salão Nobre of the Assembleia da República, designed by the architect Pardal Monteiro. Sousa Lopes represented in the three frescos the traditional economic activities of Portugal at the time; fishing (Fig. 1), wine harvesting (Fig. 2) and olive oil pressing (Fig. 3). The composition of the subjects, very simple and perfectly symmetrical, depicted two figures holding the product of their daily work in the centre of the composition and in the foreground. This is perfectly visible in the original files in O Século’s photographic service, today preserved in the National Archive of Torre do Tombo, showing the works just completed in Sousa Lopes’ workshop (Figs. 1-3). The frescoes were reproduced in a front-page story from the same Lisbon edition on January 7, 1935, which spared no praise: “The three large panels that master Sousa Lopes composed by eurythmy, by the racial expression of the figures, the themes, a poem in three songs, in honour and praise of Portuguese work, on land and in the sea.”1 1 Os três grandes painéis que mestre Sousa Lopes compôs são pela euritmia, pela expressão racial das figuras, pelos temas, um poema em três cantos, em honra e louvor do trabalho português, na terra e no mar…’ The present drawing, which dates from 1934, is a remarkable work that is rendered with great detail and on a (large) scale that is rarely seen in other works by the artist. The fishermen support between them a net full of fish ready to go to the market. It should be noted that in some areas of the drawing, as in the mass of fish in the foreground, one can see the transfer perforations with the naked eye. It is possible, therefore, that this is the design Sousa Lopes presented in the Primeira Exposição de Arte Retrospectiva (1880-1937), in Lisbon (January 1937), with the title ‘Pescadores (cartão para um fresco)’.2 The bodies of the figures are rendered in charcoal in an astonishingly hyperrealistic way, a rare case in the work of the painter, where stylisation was the rule. The faces of the fishermen, perfectly individualised, are certainly "natural" portraits and it is also likely that, on the basis of their costume, they were migrants from Nazaré and that the setting was the beach that Sousa Lopes visited virtually all his life. It was also on the basis of his studies of the fishermen from Nazaré that Sousa Lopes composed his portraits of Afonso de Albuquerque and Infante D. Henrique in the frescoes located in the Assembleia da República (Santos, op. cit., 1962, p.54). The present drawing is a composition that is bold, rigorous and perfectly symmetrical, but also absolutely in line with the synthetic style (as the artist called it) that characterised his mature style, and which was prevalent in his fresco compositions. It also evoked the Italian Primitives who were masters in this very technique. In fact, in the summer of 1934 Sousa Lopes went to Florence, Padua and Assisi, where he saw Giotto's celebrated frescoes, and later Rome, where he remained to for two further years with the help of a grant from Instituto de Alta Cultura. One of the most intriguing features in this drawing is its ostensible symmetry, in that there are two halves that appear to mirror each other. Indeed, Sousa Lopes might have been inspired by ancient and renaissance architectural design such as the format of two putti supporting between them a coat-of-arms. Interestingly, Jorge Barradas executed a relief of this kind in the same Assembly room for the former President of the Corporate Chamber, in which two putti support a symbol with the five corners of the national shield (França, op. cit., p.155). Sousa Lopes designed this composition in collaboration with the architect Raul Lino and in-keeping with the idea of a Casa Portuguesa these sober compositions were in harmonious balance with the discreet architecture of the government building. As the editor of O Século noted: ‘these are not panels insulated, intended to fill walls; but rather for overlapping, which obey the architecture that frames them and underneath which emphasises the lintel of the cimalha. The repetition of ornamental motifs is therefore determined by the location of the panels’.3 Sousa Lopes was a pioneer in the renewal of the old technique of fresco painting, paving the way for the success this form of decoration had in the public works of the Estado Novo. He was a ‘contemporary primitive’ regaled the poet Afonso Lopes Vieira, who saw the artist converting the fresco technique into modern art. In the 1934 exhibition of fresco painting he presented to the public the results of these experiments. The show had a great impact due to the novelty of the processes; the Diário de Lisboa reported "A Miracle of 2 ‘cartão para um fresco’ 3 ‘não se trata de painéis isolados, destinados a preencher paredes; mas, sim, de sobreportas, que obedecem à arquitectura que as enquadra e sob as quais ressalta a verga da cimalha. A repetição dos motivos ornamentais é, portanto, determinada pelo local onde serão colocados os painéis’ Painting in Sousa Lopes' exhibition of frescoes" (26 May 1934).4 At the time the painter also exhibited a masterful triptych entitled Os Moliceiros, his masterpiece from this period, that is now unfortunately missing. Reynaldo dos Santos explained the purpose behind the artist's innovations: ‘… and the fresco, the most logical, the widest, the most resistant form of mural decoration, has now gained new security in the use of cemented resistance, without the dangers of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), as it used to be, in its construction technique, within the limits of technical changes without altering the continuity of pictorial surfaces’.5 This was the method that Sousa Lopes also used in his panels for the Assembleia Nacional, completing them in the atelier and then having them installed in their final place. However, for anyone interested in this particular phase of the painter’s career, it is curious to note that José-Augusto França, in his noteworthy monograph on the Palácio de S. Bento (1999), never referred to them in the old government hall, but only the more visible frescoes from the Salão Nobre (ibid.). Recently discovered information has confirmed why this was: at a certain point in the last century the three frescoes were painted over with a pigment that irreversibly damaged them. Thus, this rare and accomplished design remains today the only available testament of a work which served as a pioneering project in modern art that saw the integration of fresco painting and architecture. Adriano de Sousa Lopes was born in 1879 in Vidigal, on the outskirts of Leiria, and died in Lisbon in 1944. After having spent much of his in youth in Turquel, near Alcobaça, the young man enrolled in the Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa (1895-96), where he attended the classes lead by Luciano Freire and Veloso Salgado. In 1903 he won a Valmor grant for historical painting and left the same year for Paris, where he studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts under the direction of Fernand Cormon. At the same time, he attended the prestigious school of painting: the Académie Julian. In those years he made frequent visits to the Musée du Luxembourg where he became acquainted with the Impressionist masters, who’s colourist style he closely emulated. His trip to Venice in 1907 had a great impact on his painting, making his palette lighter and more sensitive to light. Keeping a permanent studio in Paris, he exhibited regularly at the Salon between 1905 and 1912, and in 1915 was invited by the Portuguese government to organise the Fine Arts section of the Portuguese pavilion at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

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