Porto has always been known as a liberal and progressive city, with a long-standing tradition of defence of civil rights. Its population withstood an extended military siege by the royalist forces between 1832 and 1833. The victory of the liberal cause was partly due to the sacrifice of the people, who fought to support the Constitutional Chart. As a result of this heroic action, King Pedro IV called it the “very noble, unvanquished and always loyal” city of Porto.
Architect born in Porto in 1869. He attended the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes and moved to Paris where he graduated in Architecture, with honours. After his return to Portugal he became rapidly known thanks to the quantity and importance of his creations, some of which were awarded the silver and gold medals at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1900) and at Rio de Janeiro (1908). In 1907 he was appointed Architecture teacher at the Porto’s Escola de Belas-Artes, and in 1913 he became the school’s principal, a place he kept till his retirement in 1939. He is a merit academician of the Fine Arts Academies of Lisbon and Porto, a correspondent partner of the Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes and an officer of Ordem de Santiago. Among the monument projects that earned him first prize, are the ones of the Peninsular War, Marquês de Pombal and D. António Barroso, in Barcelos. He planned and built the new Martins Sarmento Foundation building, in Guimarães; the new St. John’s Theatre, in Porto; the central railway station of this city; the Alexandre Herculano and Rodrigues de Freitas secondary schools; the new Cedofeita church; and the S. Torcato and Penha temples, in Guimarães, besides a great number of modern buildings in Porto, among which the building of the insurance company “A Nacional”, at Praça da Liberdade, and the warehouse Nascimento, at Rua de Passos Manuel. He was also a teacher at the Porto’s Instituto Industrial e Comercial.
The painter António Carvalho da Silva Porto was born in Porto, on 11 November 1850. He added Porto to his name for being a native of this city. Having concluded his course at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, he then moved to Paris (1876-1877) and Rome (1879) for a traineeship. Following the examples of the Barbizon painters, he dedicated himself to aired landscapes captured live, such as “O Lago de Enghien”, a painting of elegiac expression. In 1879, Silva Porto returned to Portugal. With a prestige reputation, he received to invitation to teach as Master of the subject of Landscape at the Academia de Lisboa. In 1880 he displayed 29 paintings portraying landscapes filled with light. Among these there was the “Charneca de Belas”, a painting then purchased by D. Fernando. From 1881 onwards, Silva Porto was considered an indisputable master, and around him the Grupo do Leão (Lion Group) began to gain form, being later immortalized by Columbano in a famous painting that exists in the National Museum of Contemporaneous Art. Amid other awards, Silva Porto received the golden medal of the Portuguese Industrial Exhibition of 1984 and his first medal from the Artistic Society. Nature itself was the master and model of his paintings, overfilled with light, colour and livelihood. Silva Porto is believed to be the founder of naturalism in Portugal. He is broadly represented in the National Museum of Contemporaneous Art and, especially, in the Soares dos Reis National Museum. In the 1870s he left for Paris as a state scholarship student, devoting himself to painting and drawing. He was admitted at the Ecole de Beaux Arts and at the atelier of Cabanel, and joined the courses of A. Groisseilez and A. Yvon. With Marques de Oliveira he travelled through India, England, Belgium and Holland. Following the example of the outdoor painters of Barbizon, he practised the painting of aired and authentic landscapes. Under Daubigny’s influence he preferred trivial and melancholic periods of wet atmospheres with velvety tones, like the painting “O Lago Enghein”, presented at the Paris Salon. A symbol of the turn of Portuguese painting, he became a teacher of the subject of Landscape at the Lisbon’s Academia de Belas-Artes, in 1875.Marking the beginning of naturalism in Portugal, his landscapes, inspired by the Barbizon movement, influenced the new generation of landscape painters. He was regularly present in exhibitions and nationalised the teachings of Barbizon.Faithful to the Barbizon past, his painting turned out to be a documentation of rural morals with an animalier choice.
He was born in Porto, where he studied at the Escola de Belas-Artes and where he participated in several competitions. Delfim Guedes, principal of the Escola de Belas-Artes and later Count of Almedina, considered Loureiro a talented artist and sponsored his stay in Rome for two years. Back in Portugal he applied for a state scholarship with Columbano and, having been granted the scholarship, left for Paris in 1879.He became a Drawing and Painting teacher at the Presbyterian Ladies Academy in Australia. Elected academician at the Victoria Academy, and chosen as a member of several juries, he was also nominated Inspector of the Victoria National Gallery.He returned to Portugal in 1901 and settled in Porto, where he created a painting atelier at the Palácio de Cristal. Preoccupied with detail, he was an excellent landscape painter, naturalist, animalier and a unique portrait painter.
Painter born in Porto, he studied with João Correia and Francisco José de Resende. Although his landscapes and generic paintings were trivial, he became famous as a painter of inanimate natures and flower patterns, which exhaled sensibility.He had exhibitions at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, at the Sociedade Promotora de Belas-Artes, at the Grémio Artístico, at the Porto International Exhibition of 1865 and in Rio de Janeiro in 1908. He was the private teacher of Henrique Pousão, Marques de Oliveira and Artur Loureiro.
Painter born on 21 July 1868 in Porto, where he studied at the Academia de Belas-Artes. There he obtained honours in a drawing competition and won an architecture award. He studied in Paris from 1891 to 1897. One of his fellow students was António Nobre, author of Só, a book whose second edition (1898) had some illustrations by Júlio Gonzaga Ramos. He won the third prize at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1900) and the gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro International Exhibitions (1908 and 1912). He won his second medal at the Grémio Artístico and at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes. He wrote about architecture in such publications as “Primeiro de Janeiro”, a newspaper he worked for as an artistic director, “Comércio do Porto Ilustrado”, “Ilustrações Modernas” (1898), “Serões” (1907), “Arte” (1908) and “A Águia” (1910-1911). He was famous as a painter of peaceful landscapes, with a special predilection for the twilight streaked with purple and gold.
António Carneiro was born in Amarante on 16 September 1872. He would later meet his father, who had left for Brazil, and would lose his mother at an early age. He was raised at the Nova Sintra Baron’s Orphanage, that belonged to the Porto’s House of Mercy, and attended the city’s Fine-Arts Academy where he graduated in Painting in 1896. He then left for Paris, with a scholarship funded by the Praia e Monforte Marquis and studied at the Julien Academy. However, it was outside the Academy and the institutional ateliers that Carneiro found the real study and inspiration sources – near the symbolists that had exhibitions all over Paris at that time. Upon returning to Portugal, the artist developed his activity essentially in Porto, where he settled and where he became a teacher at the Academy. Meanwhile, the Lisbon exhibitions were not successful. He received prizes at National Exhibitions – SNBA (1903 and 1906) and International Exhibitions – Paris’ Universal (1900), St. Louis, USA (1904), Barcelona (1906) and Rio de Janeiro’s Centennial (1908). Throughout his career he took advantage of his stays at the Melgaço spa, at Leça da Palmeira’s and Figueira da Foz’s beaches, painting magnificent landscapes of those areas. He kept on travelling to Paris and looked for the reward of an extremely vast production in Brazil. He travelled to Brazil in the mid-1910s and in the late 1920s. He brought back from the country an extremely important series of water-colour paintings, which became his most “modernist” works. His work has a vast gallery of portraits – oils, charcoal sketches and the renowned red pencil drawings – where all the members of his family are represented; a landscape production that withdrew from the valid naturalism of his generation since it lacked the picturesque and abounded with the poetical atmosphere; historical paintings, best represented by the work “Camões lendo Os Lusíadas aos frades de S. Domingos”; and mostly a symbolic mysticism of magical and undefined environments, best represented by the triptych “A Vida”. This was, undoubtedly, the work that granted him a crucial place in the history of Portuguese art, so important as isolated, since the symbolism that it announced had no followers. Exhibitions: - INDIVIDUAL: 1901 – Porto’s House of Mercy; Portuguese Illustration, Lisbon / 1902 – Porto’s House of Mercy / 1911 - Portuguese Illustration, Lisbon / 1914 – Jorge Gallery, Rio de Janeiro; Salão Nobre da Associação Comercial de Paraná, Curitiba / 1916 - Álvaro Miranda Exhibition-Halls, Granja / 1918 – Jorge Gallery, Rio de Janeiro / 1922 - SNBA, Lisbon / 1925 / Atelier Exhibition-Hall, Porto / 1929 – Jorge Gallery, Rio de Janeiro; Glória Building, S. Paulo - POSTHUMOUS: 1931 – Stock-Exchange Palace, Porto; 1937 - Silva Porto Exhibition-Hall, Porto / 1954 – Amarante Library and Museum / 1955 - ESBAP; 1958 - Retrospect Exhibition, SNI, Lisbon and ESBAP / 1965 – Illustrations for the Divine Comedy, Porto’s Commercial Athenaeum / 1973 – First Centenary Retrospect Exhibition, BCG and MNSR, Lisbon and Porto; 1980 - Engº António de Almeida Foundation, Porto; Matosinhos Town Hall - COLLECTIVE: 1894 – Porto’s Artistic Centre / 1895 – Porto’s Commercial Athenaeum / 1896 – Grémio Artístico Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon / 1900 – Paris’ Universal Exhibition / 1903 – SNBA’s Third Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon / 1904 – SNBA’s Fourth Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon; St. Louis’ Universal Exhibition, USA / 1906 – SNBA’s Sixth Exhibition-Hall / 1907 – Barcelona’s Universal Exhibition / 1908 – Centenary’s Exhibition, Rio de Janeiro / 1918 – Portuguese Renaissance, Porto Collections: Português do Atlântico Bank / Borges e Irmão Bank / António Carneiro House and Workshop, Porto City Hall / Soares dos Reis National Museum / Quinta de Santiago Museum, Matosinhos Town Hall / Fernando de Castro House and Museum, Porto / Cupertino de Miranda Foundation, Famalicão / Porto’s House of Mercy / Teixeira Lopes House and Museum, V. N. Gaia Town Hall / Porto’s University Faculty of Fine-Arts / Almeida Moreira Library and Museum, Viseu / Porto’s Civil Government / Angra do Heroísmo Museum / Chiado Museum, Lisbon / Caramulo Museum / Grão Vasco Museum, Viseu / Military Museum, Porto / Machado de Castro Museum, Coimbra / João de Deus Museum, Lisbon / Stock-Exchange Palace, Porto / Coimbra’s University Active Bibliography: Solilóquios, Porto, 1936 Passive Bibliography: ALVES, João - António Carneiro e a Pintura Portuguesa, Porto, Porto City Council, 1971 / FERREIRA, Jaime - António Carneiro, pintor de Matosinhos e Leça, Matosinhos, Matosinhos City Council, 1973 / FRANÇA, José Augusto - António Carneiro, Lisbon, F.C.G., 1973 ; António Carneiro, in “Colóquio Artes”, n. 10, Dec. 1972 / LARANJEIRA, Manuel - António Carneiro - Esboço
He was born in Porto, studying from 1864 to 1873 at the Academia de Belas-Artes, as a pupil of João António Correia. He left for Paris as a state scholarship student in 1873 and there he enrolled at the Ecole de Beaux Arts and at the atelier of Cabanel. He travelled with Silva Porto through England, Belgium, Holland and Italy. The works done while at the boarding school made him famous, such as his painting “Céfalo e Pócris”. He showed a slight impressionist tendency in some of his sketches, in what regards his colour sensibility. In 1873 he returned to Portugal and became one of the founders of the Grémio Artístico. He was nominated professor of History of Painting at the Porto’s Academia de Belas-Artes and, later, the school’s principal. A notable drawer and character painter, he was interested in outdoor painting, where he showed great sensibility. He was an original interpreter of human character and landscape. An expert in the re-creation of the misty atmosphere of the northern coast mornings, he transmits a perfect idea of luminosity, reflecting his attraction to impressionism. Marques de Oliveira, together with Silva Porto, opposed the romantic values, initiating a revolution in Portuguese painting towards nationalism, objectiveness and the alleged truth of representation.
Born in Porto, Armando Basto studied at the Porto’s Fine-Arts Academy (1903-10) before leaving for Paris in the 1910s, where he remained until 1914. He participated in humour exhibitions and co-operated with newspapers by creating caricatures and satirical drawings. He lived at the “Cité Falguière” where he had to struggle for survival, working at ateliers with loaned materials. In Porto he had studied sculpture, drawing and architecture and had published satirical papers: “Lúcifer”, “Escarrador”, “O Careca”, “A Folia”, among others. He returned to Porto in 1915 and dedicated himself to painting and to graphic works. He was the animator of the Fantasists Exhibition-Hall, in 1916, in Porto, where he had tried to found an independent group the previous year. His work is characteristic of the first modernist generation, having developed around portraits, scenes from the inside of the ateliers, landscapes and urban situations, always done with a light palette and a chromatism of an excellent agreement of tone and timbre. Exhibitions: - INDIVIDUAL - 1912 – Portuguese-Brazilian Photo Exhibition-Hall, Porto / 1918 – Misericórdia Gallery, Porto / 1919 – Portuguese Illustration, Lisbon / 1920 – Bobone Exhibition Hall, Lisbon / 1958 – Retrospect Exhibition (Posthumous), SNI. - COLLECTIVE - 1911 – Free Exhibition, Lisbon / 1915 and 1616 – Humour and Modernists Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon / 1916 - Fantasists Exhibition-Hall, Porto / 1917 – Modernists Exhibition-Hall, Porto; Art and War, Porto / 1919 – Third Modernist Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon / 1920 – Bobone Exhibition-Hall, Lisbon / 1923 - SNBA, Lisbon Collections: Soares os Reis National Museum, Porto / Chiado Museum, Lisbon Passive Bibliography: Exposição Retrospectiva da Obra do Pintor Armando de Basto, Lisbon, SNI, 1958 / LOPES, Joaquim - O Pintor Armando Basto, in "O Primeiro de Janeiro", 18 June 1947 / MACEDO, Diogo de - Cadernos de Arte - IX, Lisbon, 1953
Born in Guimarães, Abel Salazar’s life and work are intimately attached to the city of Porto. Abel Salazar was a renowned doctor and scientist, who received his PhD. in 1915 and who dedicated a great part of his life to scientific research, mostly as director of the Embryology and Histology Institute. He also practised the plastic arts, mainly caricature, sculpture (plaster and bronze), painting, relief and copperplate, without any specific apprenticeship. He wrote reviews on art, philosophy and aesthetics and published various titles on this subject, namely in the newspapers “O Diabo”, “Sol Nascente” and “Seara Nova”. He always kept a posture of great civic dignity and humanism, having been persecuted for political reasons. He lived in Matosinhos, in the same house that today holds his Museum. The first stage of Abel Salazar’s painting production testifies his admiration for impressionism. In the 1930s he began a new stage in his career, opting for surfaces filled with large strokes of light and shade, of great density, which led the paintings towards a monochromatic deaf obscurantism. Markets, fairs, feminine shapes at work (porters, coal-merchants, rag pickers, and sellers) dominate his work. This granted him a role as the precursor of neo-Realism, according to some authors. Exhibitions: - INDIVIDUAL: 1938 – SNBA, Lisbon; Salão Silva Porto, Porto / 1940 – Retrospect Exhibition, Porto / 1947 – Porto / 1972 – Retrospect Exhibition - COLLECTIVE: 1935 – Great Exhibition of Portuguese Artists, Porto / 1946 and 47 – General Exhibition of Plastic Arts, SNBA, Lisbon / 1992 – 100 Years of Art in Porto, Árvore; To Feel and to Think the Markets and Fairs of Porto, Mercado Ferreira Borges, Porto. Collections: Abel Salazar House and Museum, S. Mamede de Infesta / MNSR, Porto / Teixeira Lopes House and Museum, V. N. Gaia / Leal da Câmara House and Museum, Rinchoa / Abade Baçal Museum, Bragança / BCGç, Lisbon Active Bibliography: Nota sobre a Filosofia na Arte, 1933 / Paris em 1934, 1938 / O Que é a Arte?, 1940 PASSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY: Abel Salazar - Retrato em Movimento, 1999, Centenário de Abel Salazar, Guimarães, 1989 / GUSMÃO, Adriano de - A personalidade artística de Abel Salazar, in "Seara Nova", 14 February 1948 / POMAR, Júlio - Na abertura da Exposição Póstuma de Abel Salazar, Porto, Abel Salazar Foundation, 1948 / SAAVEDRA, Alberto - Abel Salazar Íntimo, 1967 / SILVA, Amândio - Abel Salazar / Artista - No primeiro centenário do seu nascimento, Abel Salazar House and Museum, 1989.
Sculptor born in Vila Nova de Gaia, district of Porto. It was in this city that he graduated and taught. He studied at the Porto’s Fine-Arts Academy where he would later become a teacher. He was a scholarship student in Paris. He was awarded prizes at the SNBA’s Exhibition-Halls in 1935, 36, 42 and 43. Although he was present at some modernist Exhibition-Halls in Porto, António Azevedo – mainly an author of busts – would remain, at a figurative level, aesthetically attached to the 19th century. Friendly relationships with such authors as António Carneiro help to explain his choice. Exhibitions: - INDIVIDUAL: 1925 - Porto / 1965 - Guimarães - COLLECTIVE: 1918, 19, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 40 and 47 - SNBA, Lisbon / 1930 - Salão dos Independentes, Lisbon / 1957 - Braga / 1958 - V. N. Gaia Collections: MNSR, Porto / Chiado Museum, Lisbon / Abade Baçal Museum, Bragança / José Malhoa Museum, Caldas da Rainha
Born in Vila Nova de Gaia, his work marked the whole urban landscape of Porto, where he had an atelier. He graduated at ESBAP in 1912. He was distinguished at the Seville Exhibition (gold medal), at SNBA in 1916, 1917 and 1935. He also received the Soares dos Reis Prize in 1963 and the gold medal of the city of Porto. He is the author of various monuments located at public places, such as: Monuments to the Dead of the Great War - Porto, Tomar, Portalegre, Luanda, S. João da Madeira, Oliveira de Azeméis. Father Américo, The Mason, D. António Meireles, Fountain and Boys of the Avenue, at Avenida dos Aliados, Lifesaver, Raúl Brandão, Foz do Douro, all in Porto. He has also created monuments for Paredes, Paços de Ferreira, Barcelos and Tomar and decorative shapes, busts and low-reliefs for City and Town Halls, theatres and churches, as well as numerous medals. His work has always remained at an academic figurative sphere. The possession shape and a limited iconography – from the hero, to the personality cherished by the population, from the milieus of show business and of civic or justice values – corresponded entirely to the kind of public orders he accepted. Exhibitions: - COLLECTIVE: 1935 – Great Exhibition of Portuguese Artists / 1975 – Survey of 20th-century Art in Porto, MNSR, Porto / 1992 - 100 Years of Art in Porto, Árvore, Porto Collections: MNSR, Porto / Abade Baçal Museum, Bragança / José Malhoa Museum, Caldas da Rainha / Dr. Santos Rocha Museum, Figueira da Foz / Ovar Museum
He was born in Ilhavo in 1864 and died in Porto in 1944. A graduate of the Porto’s Polytechnic School in 1886, he soon fell for politics, and embraced the Republican Party. Between 1907 and 1910 he was a city councillor and deputy in the 1900’s elections. He devoted himself to professorship at the Porto’s Industrial and Commercial Institute, having been the first to use reinforced concrete in the building construction. In 1910 he was elected as Mayor of Porto. An historical republican, member of the Machado Santos government (13.12.1916), he held the office of Commerce Secretary during Sidónio Pais’ consulship (1917). He then held the office of Finance Secretary (7.3.1918). He was replaced on 1 June of that year and abandoned politics. Towards the end of his life he was a member of the board of directors of the Beira Alta Railway Company.
Born in Porto, in a bourgeois and conservative milieu, José Duarte Ramalho Ortigão inherited from his upbringing and family environment the conservative mind, the methodical work methods, and the love for his parents and for country life. Although not a democrat, he followed – in the line of Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano – the liberal prototype, always defending, against authoritarianism, repression and the mediocre vices and ambitions of that time, the legitimate rights of Men and the defence of his moral dignity. He became a friend and letters’ companion of Eça de Queirós and an admirer of Antero de Quental. He also intervened in the “Questão Coimbrã” with a leaflet called Today’s Literature, although he did not participate, like Eça and Quental, in the “Casino Conferences” in 1871 (a series of “democratic conferences” of socialist origin, promoted by the Cenacle’s Cultural Group, led by Antero de Quental, and interrupted by the authorities). At that time, however, he began with Eça, for more than two years, the publishing, in monthly fascicles, of As Farpas, that kept on being regularly published and written by him until 1882. This is the work that tried to analyse and criticise, with the help of irony and laughter (according to Eça), the society of that time, focusing on various aspects of the Portuguese life of the late 19th century: education, economy, politics, art, journalism, religion, morals, etc... He travelled a long time through Europe, in a time of industrial development. From such travels resulted works whose literary impressionism conjugates with an objective and serene observation of reality as, for instance, in A Holanda and in John Bull e a sua ilha. He has also travelled around his own country (a country he loved so much), trying to enhance the positive and original sides of a country that had fallen into a deplorable decadence and mediocrity, contradicting its century-old history and the progressive 19th-century world. With the advent of the Republic and the publishing of Últimas Farpas (1911-1915) he took a clearly adverse stand to the new regime, therefore regaining his traditionalist view of the world, more in agreement with his upbringing and with the environment in which he grew up. Main works: As Farpas, 15 vols., 1871-1882; A Holanda, 1883; John Bull, 1887; Banhos das Caldas e Águas Minerais, 1875; As Praias de Portugal, 1876; Notas de Viagem, 1878; Pela Terra Alheia, 2 vols., 1878-1880; O Culto da Arte em Portugal, 1896; O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra, in co-operation with Eça de Queirós, 1871; Últimas Farpas, 1911-1915. The following books were published posthumously: Quatro grandes figuras literárias, 1924; Farpas esquecidas, 2 vols., 1946-1947.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Joaquim Guilherme Gomes Coelho was born in Porto where he spent the thirty-two years of his life. Although he died young he had enough time to become Júlio Dinis, one of the most popular writers of the Portuguese 19th century and one of the greatest names of our 19th-century novel. He was born on 14 November 1839 and died on 12 September 1871. In 1853 he enrolled at the Porto’s Academia Politécnica. Three years later he joined the Porto’s Escola Médico-Cirúrgica, where his writing developed. His first play dates from 1856 and many followed. However, the artistic name of Júlio Dinis appeared for the first time only in 1860, with the publication of several poems in the ultra-romantic magazine A Grinalda. 1858-59 was also the year he began his first novel: Uma Família Inglesa, unpublished until 1867. The year 1863 spent in Ovar was essential for the literary evolution of Júlio Dinis. There he wrote the most important parts of As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor and of A Morgadinha dos Canaviais, two country life novels. A Morgadinha dos Canaviais was published in Porto, in 1874, the year the author died. Still in 1870, Júlio Dinis saw the publication of the first volume of Serões de Província, a compilation of his novellas and short stories written during the first stage of his literary production. Júlio Dinis’ literary life (1856-1870) developed during the Regeneration period. Two biographic elements are essential to fully understand the literary evolution of the author among the contemporary Portuguese novelists: on the one hand his bourgeois family origin of English lineage, on the other hand his scientific positivistic education.
He was born in Porto in 1867 and died of tuberculosis in Foz do Douro in 1900, after trying to recover in Switzerland, Madeira and New York. He studied in Coimbra and escaped to Paris where he took a degree in Political Sciences at the Sorbonne. There he contacted with the French coeval poetry - Verlaine, Jean Moréas, Laforgue... Loneliness, the lack of means aggravated by his father’s death, made him morbidly reject the present and the future, following a pessimistic romantic attitude that leads him to denounce his tedium and his “phthisic soul”. However excessive, this is a controlled attitude, due to a clear aesthetic mind and a real sense of ridicule. He learned the colloquial tone from Garrett and Júlio Dinis, and also from Jules Laforgue, but he exceeds them all in the peculiar compromise between irony and a refined puerility, a fountain of happiness because it represents a return to his happiest of times - a kingdom of his own from where he resuscitates characters and enchanted places, manipulating, as a virtuoso of nostalgia, the picturesque of popular festivals and of fishermen, the simple magic of toponyms and the language of the people. Nobre manifests himself and mourns over himself as a doomed poet, with a hard soul and a maiden’s heart. In his prescience of pain, in his spiritual anticipation of disease and of agony, in his taste for sadness, in his unmeasured pride of isolation, António (from Torre de Anto, at the centre of old Coimbra where the poet lived an enchanted life, everywhere writing his mythical and literary name: Anto) keeps an artist’s composure, always expressing the cult of the aesthetic life. Other than Só (Paris, 1892) two other posthumous works were published: Despedidas (1st edition, 1902), with a fragment from O Desejado, and Primeiros Versos (1st edition, 1921). António Nobre’s correspondence is reunited in several volumes: Cartas Inéditas a A.N., with an introduction and notes by A. Casais Monteiro, Cartas e Bilhetes-Postais a Justino de Montalvão with a foreword and notes by Alberto de Serpa, Porto, 1956; Correspondência, with an introduction and notes by Guilherme de Castilho, Lisbon, 1967 (a compilation of 244 letters, 56 of which unpublished).
The Portuguese cinema was born in Porto. It was shown for the first time in a screening that took place on 12 September 1896 at the Teatro do Príncipe Real, presently Teatro Sá da Bandeira. The person responsible for this historic session had also been born in Porto, on 28 July 1862. The subjects presented were national and even the projection machine used, which was bought abroad, seems to have gone through some adaptations done by our first cinematographer. All this is due to Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, a Romantic personality of a “fin-de-siècle” Porto. He was a photographer, floriculturist and an active republican, who took part in the events of the 31 January 1891. Cinema appeared then as a good “complement” to the evenings and nights of the old building located at the heart of the stirring Porto of the 19th century. Our pioneer was helped by his brother in law, the photographer Magalhães Bastos, “co-owner of Photografia Central”, which was also an important commercial house in the field of Photography, for which Porto was prestigiously known. In little more than two weeks, Paz dos Reis and his “Kinetographo” left an undeniable sign in history; according to the news, the Portuguese cinema was born amongst a round of applause. According to the researcher of cinema history Amândio Videira Santos, Paz dos Reis presented 33 films, 22 directed by him and 11 foreign productions. The following are some of the films mentioned: Um Arraial no Bonfim; Azenhas do Rio Ave; A caninha verde; Caricaturas por Pina Vaz; Chegada de um Comboio Americano em Cadouços; Saída do Pessoal da Fábrica Confiança; etc.. Portuguese Cinema was born, in a way, with the small picture named Saída do Pessoal da Fábrica Confiança, a film that is kept at the Portuguese Film Collection since 1982. Paz dos Reis suspended is work at an early stage, but the contagious enthusiasm that poured out of his personality impressed a city, which was going through a particularly spirited and stimulating creative period at the end of the 19th century.
On 27 August 1896 newspapers reported a screening at Teatro do Príncipe Real, only to the press and a few guests, with the Portuguese Cinematograph, made and presented by the “distinguished and intelligent” Porto’s electrician Francisco Pinto Moreira, assuring that the machine was not that of brothers Lumière but a product of the “work and knowledge of the distinguished electrician” from Porto. From 27 August on the public screenings started and the sessions at Pinto Moreira’s cinematograph lasted for several days. Some historians questioned which of the following Porto inhabitants had been the Portuguese cinema pioneer – Paz dos Reis or Pinto Moreira. However, today it seems quite certain that it was Paz dos Reis.
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