Estimate

20.000 - 30.000

Session 3

29 September 2021

Hammer Price

Description

Carrara marble sculpture
Signed and dated 1877

70x40x29 cm

Category

Sculpture

António Soares dos Reis

Born on 14 October 1847 in the parish of S. Cristóvão de Mafamude in Vila Nova de Gaia, António Soares dos Reis came from a humble family. One day, either because he saw his drawings or small sculptures, or because António had drawn on the whitewashed walls of his house, his neighbor, Diogo de Macedo found him well suited for the Fine Arts. From childhood to the last day of his life, his existence was doomed by sadness and depression. Taciturn, neurasthenic, dejected, all these adjectives are recurrently used to narrate the great sculptor until they revert to an irrefutable truth. Apparently, the reality was a little different and the depression from which he suffered was attributed to him by time and not by the truth. He was a man with some sense of humor (good or bad, that's questionable). He liked to party with friends, sing, play the guitar and games with those closest to him, to make a good joke and he knew how to accept the ones that were about him. There were only two topics he didn't like to talk about: religion and politics. He was a Christian and a Catholic – as he affirmed at the time of his death – but he was almost indifferent to the religious cults, theories and dogmas of the church. He recognized all beliefs and was against anything that restricted or curtailed freedom of conscience and the right of opinion. In political matters, despite having a great and spontaneous aversion to it, he followed the same order of ideas and the same principles of freedom, justice and morality. But life was not just work and in the early 1880s the sculptor fell in love with the young Amélia de Macedo, granddaughter of Diogo de Macedo and the marriage took place on July 15, 1885, just four years before his suicide. In 1888, he left Lisbon – where he had learned that Elisa Leech did not approve of the bust she had made of herself – and returned to Gaia to write a letter to the Porto Academy of Fine Arts, dated July 2, to manifest the intention of leaving the regency of the chair of sculpture. At the beginning of 1889, his illness showed signs of worsening, and he began to suffer from great mental agitation and irritability. Constantly isolated, there is an apparent improvement and on February 15th he meets his friends to present his project for Monumento ao Infante D. Henrique. The next morning, he got up and went to give some touches to the work he was working on at the time, the Busto de Fontes Pereira de Melo for the headquarters of the Porto Commercial Association. Shortly thereafter, his wife heard a bang in the ground-floor room, similar to a detonation, and ran to see what was going on, where she found her husband, standing, cleaning his pistol and justifying that if he had been distracted and had accidentally shot. After that, he went to his office, on one of the walls he wrote “Sou cristão, porém nestas condições a vida para mim é insuportável. Peço perdão a quem ofendi injustamente, mas não perdoo, a quem me fez mal”, and shot himself in the head.

Artistic training

The first phase of Soares dos Reis' education took place at the Academia de S. Lázaro (known as the Porto Academy of Fine Arts), where as an extracurricular activity, he had the opportunity to carry out essays in sculpture under the direction of António Luís da Silva Cruz, which provided him with the practice he could not find at the Academy. The big boost in his training as a sculptor came when he went as a boarder (1867-1872) to Paris and then to Rome, where he acquired the teachings of the most renowned masters of the time. It was during these years that, through visits to churches, gardens, squares, museums, and ruins, he was open to contact with the most excellent artistic creations in the History of Art, not only in Paris and Rome but in the various European cities he visited. On August 31, 1867, he was unanimously approved for the boarding school in Paris. Although there were no more competitors for the sculpture scholarship, the young student had to undergo several tests, which consisted of modeling a natural head (the Bust of Firmino), a life-size figure (Academy), a bas-relief (Mercury putting Argos asleep to the sound of a flute) and a modelless sketch, done in a closed cabinet. It’s known that he arrived in Paris on the 6th of November of that year and stayed there for three years (until he was forced to return to Portugal due to the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war). His main goals in Paris were two: to be admitted to the atelier of the sculptor François Jouffroy (1806-1882) and to be accepted at the École Imperiale et Speciale des Beaux Arts (EISBA). Both were difficult to achieve, but while the first took about three months, the second was only completed a year after its arrival.
As the masters' ateliers belonged to the EISBA, for a foreign student to be admitted, authorization from the superintendent of the school was essential. In the case of the young Soares dos Reis, the Minister of Portugal in Paris sent a request to the EISBA for him to be admitted to the sculptor Jouffro's studio. But the answer was negative because the number of places was already filled. To solve this problem Soares dos Reis ended up asking for the interception of the French sculptor at the EISBA and from the 14th of January 1868 Soares dos Reis began to attend the atelier It was only in April 1869 that he was admitted to the EISBA where he achieved an excellent performance, having obtained several distinctions, as well the admiration of masters and colleagues who called him Voleur de prix, “Thief of Prizes”, a playful expression, but at the same time admiring. In the disciplines of Drawing, he was a student of the painter Frédric Adolphe Yvon (1817-1893), in sculpture by the Jouffroy and in Philosophy of Art by Taine. It was during this period that he executed works such as Le tireur d' Épines (1869), today in the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum (Inv. No. 17370.01 TC) and the Fisherman in bronze (1870) which is also in the collection of the same museum (Inv. No. 17371.01 TC). When he returned to Portugal, due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, he stayed in Bayonne waiting for the train, and during that time he drew the landscape that his eyes caught on a business card he carried with him. However, there was a time of military conflict and he was, for a few hours, imprisoned in St. Esprit jail. On the back of that card, he wrote: “Vista da ponte de Bayonne. 13 de Agosto de 1870. Croquis pelo qual estive preso”. He stayed for two months in Vila Nova de Gaia and then left, also as a scholarship, for Rome, where he arrived on January 17, 1871. It was in this city that he started one of his main works “O Desterrado” which, after being modeled was left in Rome, leaving to visit other Italian lands. In the last months of that year, he was informed that the funds given to pensioners, were going to be interrupted and that he should return to Portugal by the end of October. Soares dos Reis had already used everything he had received in the marble for the realization of “O Desterrado” and could not finish it in time to carry out the new directions. In the meantime, he lived as he could, with what little he had left, until he was confirmed to extend his stay in Rome, receiving new subsidies for the completion of the final work as a scholarship. António Soares dos Reis had a talent that needed to be perfected, and that was the main role of the boarding school in his life. With the end of the period of the sholarship, he returned to Portugal, having arrived in Vila Nova de Gaia in the first days of September 1872. Shortly thereafter, he presented “O Desterrado” as proof for the success of his studies under the scholarship. Months later, on December 23, he was appointed Academician of Merit by the Academia do Porto. The following year, he moved to what was his first studio, at nº 99 of Rua das Malmerendas, today Rua Dr. Alves Veigas, where he remained until 1875. It was in this space that he carried out some of his first important works: Cabeça de Negro, Saudade, O Artista na Infância (work in honor of Grão Vasco) and the commission of a Nossa Senhora da Vitória (which was not well received by the Church). The recognition and growing appreciation of his work earned him the nomination as an Academic of Merit by the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts, and it was in that same year of 1876 that he presented the plaster of the work that we are now bringing to auction “at the Lisbon Fine Arts exhibition. About this presentation is reported in the Occidente magazine of October 1, 1878 “... recebendo ahi um justo brado de admiração. Era a revelação de um formoso talento, de uma d’essas vocações raras e privilegiadas que não são vulgares em todos os tempos e em todos os paizes. A par da profundeza da concepção manifestava-se um grande poder de execução no escopro que assim fazia ressaltar do mármore, em vigorosos ímpetos de vida, uma musculatura animada e palpitante, traduzindo n’ um sorriso ingenuo e infantil, a íntima sensação de um espírito predestinado.” On the same text we can also read “a infância do artista prova bem que taes lições não inúteis para o artista portuguez”. It’s in that same article that we learn that this marble sculpture belonged to the 3rd Duchess of Palmela and that it had just received an honorable mention at the Universal Paris exhibition of 1878, information that deserved to appear on the cover of the publication, through in a drawing, signed Alberto, executed from a photograph of this sculpture.

The artist's work

António Soares dos Reis was a landmark in Portuguese sculpture of his time. This statement seems like a cliché but looking at the scenario of the sculpture conceived in Portugal in the 2nd half of the 19th century, we find that the artist was part of a very limited group, from which little more names stand out than those of Vítor Bastos and Alberto Nunes. We recognize that his work was officially consecrated when Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) ran to kiss his hands and gave him considerable praise. When the one who is internationally esteemed as one of the greatest icons of sculpture of all times raises in this way an almost anonymous sculptor of a small village in the North of Portugal, it would not be categorically out of mercy, but because he was recognized as having genuine genius skills. This episode happened when Rodin, contemplated the sculpture that represents the granddaughter of the 3rd Duchess of Palmela at the age of 8, “The daughter of the Counts of Almedina”. This work, dated 1881, and which today is part of the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum (Invº nº 17419 TC) shows us a rigorous work around the hair, face and exquisite clothes, which prove the quality and sensitivity of the artist. In fact, the quality and beauty of his works are undeniable, as well as the unique talent of portraying beyond what is perceptible, outlining in his work the personality of the figures he reproduces. In this way, who arrives at the Soares dos Reis Museum and admires “O Desterrado” almost expects him to rise from the rock on which he is sitting, reflecting and follow his path. In relation to the work that represents the Count of Ferreira, we assume that he lowers and extends his hand to greet us, and “Abandonado” enshrines the desire to hold and carry it with us. Finally, when contemplating the work that is now being presented – “The Artist in Childhood” – we are enveloped in the tenderness of an innocent child, but at the same time reguila, who holds a pencil and scribbles the first drawings. Only this should have been enough for him to deserve to be remembered and appreciated, but his sculptor side was one of many he possessed that made him an extraordinary character.

“O artista na infância”

It was with the work “O Desterrado” (dated 1872) that the author truly debuted in his artistic activity, but it was with the project of the statue that we are now bringing up for auction that he launched himself on the national art market. For this production, he executed a series of sketches (most belonging to the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum) where the artist can be seen to have rehearsed the child's figure in different orientations (standing against a trunk, throwing water from a jar and sitting in the attitude of someone drawing) until he gets the representation of a boy sitting on the floor and bending over himself. Two more tests followed in which the figure appears seated under a block of stone (one holding a bird, the other holding a pencil and randomly scribbling a block). t is the latter that prevails in a final study, which is part of a private collection, and in the plaster found in Casa-Museu Dr. José Relvas em Alpiarça, and in the final marble. This sculpture will have cost 600 thousand réis, an amount mentioned in a letter dated November 1879 entitled AUTOBIOGRAPHIA, written by the sculptor's own hand in response to the questionnaire that the art critic and his great friend Joaquim de Vasconcelos had sent him that same year. This document was unpublished for about 25 years, it was only in February 1905 that it was published under the title “Aos Amigos de Soares dos Reis” in A Revista. Descriptive analysis: This child is represented sitting on a step or on a stone that simultaneously serves as a table for the sketch he scribbles. With his head bent over his left shoulder, arms directed to the left, legs crossed to the right, he follows a compositional scheme whose rhythm is identical to that found in the 1872 work “O Desterrado”. The treatment of the body resembles that of the ancient nudes, but this work presents other formal and conceptual aspects, which carry inexplicable emotions, a characteristic close to the romantic spirit of the 19th century. For example, the face and hair are profoundly naturalistic, and as they droop because of the intensifying the twist of the head, they create a formal tension that is offset by the expressiveness of the right hand. At the same time, this tilt of the head to the left balances the weight applied to the tip of the pencil with which the child draws. Here there’s an absorption of the figure in his activity and a transparency at the level of the physiognomy, which refers to a multiplicity of astonishing expressions and feelings, but with a profoundly genuine stamp. His smile is similar, in the formal and emotional point of view, to the classic representations of fauns and satyrs (whose expressions are characterized by malice). In fact, it is largely due to the indefinable expression of the young artist's smile, situated between boldness and satisfaction, that the representation's enigmatic effect and its exceptional character are owed to it.

TIAGO FRANCO RODRIGUES

Exhibition: As Belas-artes do romantismo em Portugal, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto, 1999/2000

Provenance: Colecção da 3ª Duquesa de Palmela

Literature: AA. VV. – As Belas-artes do romantismo em Portugal, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto, 1999 José Augusto França – A Arte em Portugal no Século XIX. 2a ed. Lisboa: Bertrand, 1981. Vol. I e II. O Occidente, No 19. Lisboa: 1878 O Ocidente, Vol. XII. Lisboa: 1889 Sónia Margarida Serra Queiroga – Casa oficina do escultor António Soares dos Reis, 1847-1889: reavilitação de uma memória e reabilitação de um espaço, Tese de mestrado em História Regional e Local, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2012