Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro

Biography

In 1882 a painting by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, “Soirée chez Lui”, hung at the Paris Salon. The public was mostly middle-class, the critics had a reputation for severity, and the canvas was well received. For a Portuguese painter of twenty-four who had come to France on someone else’s money, it was the first notable success.

He was born on 21 November 1857; the sources give his birthplace differently: Cacilhas (across the river from Lisbon), Almada, or Lisbon itself. His father, Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro, was a sculptor and painter of Romantic leanings, his elder brother Rafael became a well-known caricaturist, and his sister Maria Augusta also painted. Columbano was the fourth child in the family. He began with his father, then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon under the painter Miguel Ângelo Lupi and the sculptor José Simões de Almeida.

Twice he tried to win a scholarship to study abroad, and twice he failed. In the end the trip was paid for privately: by one account by the Countess of Edla, second wife of the king consort Ferdinand II, by another by Ferdinand himself. He spent about a year in Paris, in 1881–1882, with his elder sister. His link with Carolus-Duran is described differently: some accounts say that the French painter encouraged him and urged him to study, others that he may have been his pupil, though the evidence is contradictory. Columbano apparently disliked Carolus-Duran’s manner of teaching and largely taught himself, going round museums and exhibitions. He studied Courbet, Manet, Degas and Fantin-Latour; the influence of Manet and Degas is visible in his work. He rejected Impressionism as such, and I would call his style intimate and sombre rather than bright.

After his return he joined the “Grupo do Leão”, or Golden Lion circle, named after a restaurant in central Lisbon where artists, writers and intellectuals met. There they argued about aesthetics and championed Naturalism against academic art. With him in the circle were his brother Rafael, José Malhoa, Silva Porto and Marques de Oliveira.

The core of his legacy, to my mind, is the portraits. He painted the men of the “Generation of 70”, who brought Realism to Portugal: Eça de Queirós (the portrait is lost), the historian Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins, Antero de Quental, Guerra Junqueiro and Teófilo Braga; later Raul Brandão and Teixeira de Pascoaes. His 1889 portrait of Antero de Quental is regarded as the finest of them. Among his other works are the panels of the “Passos Perdidos” (Lost Steps) in the reception hall of the São Bento Palace, and history paintings for the Military Museum in Lisbon, including “The Drama of Inês de Castro”. He also worked for the magazines “O António Maria”, “Atlântida” and “Contemporânea”.

From 1901 Columbano taught history painting at the same Academy where he had studied.

A convinced republican, after the proclamation of the republic in 1910 he joined the commission that designed the new Portuguese flag. In 1914 the new government appointed him director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, today the Chiado Museum in Lisbon, succeeding Carlos Reis. In 1927 Columbano resigned. For almost twenty years he lived and worked in a house-studio in the Lisbon quarter of Vila Martel, one of the first places in the city with artists’ studios.

In December 1919 he was made a Grand Officer of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, and in February 1920 he received the Grand Cross of the same order. He died in Lisbon on 6 November 1929. The best collection of his paintings is in the Chiado Museum, and his work is also in other Portuguese museums, for example the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto.