Estimate

25.000 - 35.000

Session 1

20 July 2022

Hammer Price

Description

Still life
Oil on board

41,5x32 cm

Category

Paintings

Additional Information

Provenance: Count of Ameal collection
Catalogued as lot number 1096 in the collection 1921 auction sale

THE 1ST COUNT OF AMEAL ART COLLECTION - “ARS SUPER OMNIA” (ART ABOVE ALL)

João Maria Correia Aires de Campos (1847-1920) was a renowned politician from Coimbra that would become one of the most important art collectors of the 19th to 20th century transition, simultaneously assuming a decisive role in the dynamics of the Portuguese art market of his time by acquiring a considerable number of works by Portuguese artists his contemporaries. Following on his father footsteps he became a Law student at the University of Coimbra, completing his degree in 1875. Soon after he joins the Regenerator Party and, in 1876, marries Maria Amélia de Sande Mexia Vieira da Mota (the daughter of a landowner family with traditions in the judiciary and in academia, niece and sole heiress of the 1st Count of Juncal) with whom he will father four sons. President of the District of Coimbra, at the time the third largest city in the country, in 1893 he was elected city mayor, a position he will maintain until 1895. In that decade, albeit intermittently, he also became a Member of Parliament, seating in parliamentary Commissions on Public Administration (1893 and 1894), on Trade and the Arts (1894) and on Statistics (1897). Simultaneously, his distinguished political, social, and cultural activity granted him important national and international recognition, being awarded the Great Cross of the Military Order of Christ, the Grand Commander Insignia of the Royal Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa and the Gold and Silver Palms of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques de France. In 1901, on retiring from public life, he was ennobled by King Carlos I with the title of 1st Count of Ameal, the small village near Coimbra where his maternal ancestors had their roots and family home. At the same time his eldest son – also a politician and a diplomat serving in the Venceslau de Lima Ministry of Foreign Affairs – was also granted the title of 1st Viscount of Ameal. Significantly, for his armorial shield the new count chose the motto “Ars Super Omnia” – Art Above All.

THE ART COLLECTION

In 1885 the future Count of Ameal inherited a considerable collection of manuscripts and antique printed books from his father, a collection which would grow into one to the most important private libraries in Portugal. In addition to this library, he also benefited from antiques and art objects which would become the embryo of the large and renowned art collection amassed in the following decades. Despite the evident eclectic nature of the collection however, he was not one of those collectors that gathered objects based on a contemporary fashion or for purely ostentatious purposes. In the Gazeta de Coimbra newspaper, his profile was described in the following terms: “His was not the snobbery of wanting works of art for others. He had them for himself, very much for himself, for the feeling of the artist and for his intellectual emotiveness, and often on his own, he would live with them, cuddle them, absorb them in the pleasant atmosphere of his palace rooms”. In 1892 he acquired the 16th century buildings of the old convent and college of São Tomás, converting them into a vast home. During the following years his rooms, some still in their original gothic shape albeit the building’s classical and sober exterior, would fill up with precious furniture, old masters and approximately 30,000 rare books. It is through the catalogue of the 1921 auction sale of his collection that it is possible to understand the taste of this art collector, as well as the importance of the contents of the house’s 14 rooms (identified from A to N in the catalogue) and of its exceptional Renaissance cloister. The collection amounted to 2500 objects, and included paintings, sculptures, furniture, porcelain, faience, tiles, drawings, watercolours, prints, musical instruments, bronzes, silver, altar fronts, ivories – such as the carved mythological scene plaque auctioned by Veritas (lot 657, auction 107) - enamels, crystals, and Venetian glass. The paintings gallery alone comprised of over 600 works, including a Saint John The Baptist attributed to Caravaggio, a large male head drawing by Rembrandt, a Glorification of the Virgin by Rubens, The Terrestrial Paradise by Jan Brueghel and two portraits by Zurbaran. In addition, there were also two canvases by Murillo, three by Greuze, four by Ribera, a canvas and three prints by Goya as well as a large collection of watercolours by Turner and Delacroix. Besides major international artists such as Durer, Velasquez, Rembrandt or Bartolozzi, the Portuguese artistic production was also well represented by such painters as Pedro Alexandrino, Cyrillo Wolkmar Machado, King Fernando II and Tomás da Anunciação amongst others. An admirer of the Portuguese artists his contemporaries, particularly those from the Realistic School popular at the time, he also owned a large selection of canvas and drawings by José Malhoa, Columbano and António Silva Porto, amongst which was the “O Menino e as Suas Ovelhas” now at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Oporto. Towards the end of his life the Count of Ameal assembled a large collection of Gothic sculpture and paintings as well as of religious late medieval and modern age Portuguese paintings, which he acquired following from the nationalization of the Catholic church property in 1910. Another major area of his collecting was porcelain and Islamic faience, mainly Iberian and late medieval, summing up to 800 pieces. Upon his death in 1920, his widow and heirs decided to sell most of the collection and donate the palace to a religious Order. For such purpose an auction sale was scheduled for July 1921. Considered one of the largest such sales in the history of the Portuguese art market, described by Norberto de Araújo as “the most curious and thrilling art related event in the last century”, it can nonetheless be confronted with two other such events that preceded it. One in 1893 in which were sold the collections amassed by King Fernando II and another one in 1901 organised for selling the collection of the Marquess of Foz. Later, the Portuguese market would also witness the sale of the estate of the banker and collector Count of Burnay in 1936 and, in 1946, the sale of the contents of the Palace of Monserrate in Sintra. Of the 2019 lots inventoried in 1921 by the “Empresa de Móveis Lda.”, which resulted in a 120-page catalogue printed in French and illustrated with 100 photographs by the Coimbra photographer Milton Bartholo, and with some illustrations of works and artists faces, the painting that we are now bringing for sale at auction corresponded to lot nr.1096, being described as “Tableau à l’huille sur bois “Nature mort”. École hollandaise, Van Huyssen.”and displayed in room I.

TIAGO FRANCO RODRIGUES

Literature: Vente d’ objects d’art. Collections “Comte de Ameal”. Catalogue descriptif. Lisboa: Offic ”Illustração portuguesa”, 1921 Conde do Ameal. O seu falecimento”, Gazeta de Coimbra, 15.07.1920 Clara Moura Soares, "A Coleção de arte do Conde do Ameal: o leilão de 1921 e as aquisições do Estado Português para os Museus Nacionais" in Coleções de Arte em Portugal e no Brasil nos séculos XIX e XX. Modos de ver e exibir em Brasil e Portugal, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Books, 2016 pp. 89-105