José Malhoa

Biography

In 1880 Malhoa won a bronze medal at an exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora de Belas Artes (the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts), and a few years earlier he had been selling women’s goods in a shop on Rua Nova do Almada in Lisbon. The road from the counter to palace ceilings took him less than ten years.

He was born on 28 April 1855 in Caldas da Rainha, the son of Joaquim Malhoa and Ana Clemência. At eight his brother Joaquim took him to Lisbon. At twelve he was working for the woodcarver Leandro Braga and entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers included Miguel Ângelo Lupi, Tomás da Anunciação, Simões de Almeida and others. He did only moderately well at first. His applications for a scholarship to study in Paris were turned down; according to one account, because he had no connections, and the matter became a scandal, after which the Academy awarded no scholarships at all that year. Malhoa, by the same accounts, decided to give up painting and went to work behind the counter in his brother’s shop. After six months he began painting again in the evenings and at weekends. A picture he sent to an exhibition in Madrid was well received.

In 1881 he left trade altogether. That same year he contributed to the magazine O Occidente and was one of the founders of the Grupo do Leão (Lion Group), an association of artists and writers of the 1880s; at the group’s first exhibition, at the Lisbon Geographical Society, he showed seven works. His first large commissions were decorative: a ceiling painting in a hall of the Lisbon conservatoire, then work for the Supreme Court. In 1885 he had his first studio, at the Pátio Martel in Lisbon; in 1886 he painted a ceiling in the Burnay Palace, and in 1888 decorations for the Ajuda Palace. For a painting of the departure of Vasco da Gama’s expedition he won first prize in a competition in 1887, and in 1888 the king awarded him the Order of Christ.

Around 1890 Malhoa painted a portrait of Carlos I and joined the Grémio Artístico (the Artistic Guild), where he exhibited regularly. Later he painted members of the royal family. Pupils worked in his studio, among them Emília dos Santos Braga and Maria de Lourdes de Mello e Castro; from 1921 until his death he remained the latter’s teacher.

In 1895 he began building a house and studio in Figueiró dos Vinhos, the “Casulo” (Portuguese for “cocoon”). In 1900 he received a silver medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle, in 1901 the Order of Isabella the Catholic, and in that year, when the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (the National Society of Fine Arts) was founded, he was elected its first president. In 1904 construction began on his house and studio in Lisbon, designed by the architect Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior; in 1906 the house won the Valmor Prize for architecture. In the same year the French president made Malhoa a Knight of the Legion of Honour. He also exhibited abroad, in Berlin, St Petersburg, Liverpool and Rio de Janeiro.

His best work, to my mind, was done not for palaces but for ordinary people. “The Drunks” (1907) and “Fado” (1910) show tavern and village scenes; alongside them stand “Island of Love” (1908), “Promises” (1920) and “Conversation with the Neighbour” (1932). He kept to a naturalist manner but came close to Impressionism in his landscapes: critics call “Autumn” (1918) an Impressionist exercise. He also contributed to the magazine Atlântida (1915–1920).

In 1928 Malhoa was made a Grand Officer of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword. He died on 26 October 1933 in Figueiró dos Vinhos and was buried in the Prazeres Cemetery in Lisbon. In that same year, 1933, a museum bearing his name was established in Caldas da Rainha. The Lisbon house, bought a year before the painter’s death by the collector Anastácio Gonçalves, has been a museum since 1980.