Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon, Portugal 1846 - idem 1905)
Caricaturist, ceramist.
Born into a family of artists, he began in the arts as a stage actor, attending the School of Dramatic Arts in 1860. The following year, he enrolled in the higher course in letters and at the Academia de Belas Artes de Lisboa, where he also attended, without completing them, courses in civil architectural drawing, artistic drawing and life drawing. In 1868, he joined the Sociedade Promotora das Belas Artes, taking part in exhibitions held by the institution. The following year, he published his first caricatures in the newspaper A Revolução de Setembro and began producing caricatures for his first album, O Calcanhar de Achilles [Achilles' Heel], published in Lisbon in 1870. That same year, he founded the periodicals A Berlinda and O Binóculo. In 1871, he won an award at the Madrid International Exhibition with the work Bodas d'Aldeia [Village Wedding]. In 1872, he published the album Apontamentos sobre a Picaresca Viagem do Imperador do Rasilb pela Europa [Notes on the Picaresque Journey of the Emperor of Rasilb through Europe], in which he satirizes Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891). In 1875, he came to Brazil and founded the periodical Lanterna Mágica [Magic Lantern], in which he created the character Zé Povinho. That same year, he contributed to the periodical O Mosquito alongside Angelo Agostini (1843 - 1910). In 1876, he worked on O Fígaro with Cândido de Faria (1849 - 1911). In 1877, he founded Psit! and, the following year, O Besouro [The Beetle], in which he published a series of caricatures satirizing local politicians. After suffering two attacks in the city, he returned to Portugal in 1879. In 1880, with other Portuguese artists, he created the Grupo do Leão, which, distancing itself from academicism, introduced naturalism into Portuguese art. In 1885, he founded the Fábrica de Faianças [Faience Factory] in Caldas da Rainha, which revitalized ceramic production in the region. In 1889, the factory's production won an award at the Paris International Exposition. As the person responsible for building the Portuguese Pavilion, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
Critical Commentary
A pioneer of caricature in Portugal, Bordalo Pinheiro was already a renowned artist when he came to Brazil in 1875. The 1870 publication of the album O Calcanhar de Achilles, in which he satirizes various figures of Lisbon's literary world, was followed by other editions, such as Apontamentos de Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro sobre a Picaresca Viagem do Imperador do Rasilb pela Europa, 1872, and História Tétrica duma Empresa Lírica [Gloomy History of an Opera Company], 1873, a collection of cartoons of the leading Portuguese actors of the period. These creations spread his prestige, as well as his reputation as an irreverent and controversial artist. The Apontamentos de Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, an album of more than a hundred drawings organized as a comic strip, in which he satirizes Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891), was a great success.
In the early 1870s, besides producing for the periodicals A Berlinda and O Binóculo, which he founded, and other Portuguese press outlets, he contributed to the magazines Ilustración Española y Americana and El Mundo Cómico, of Madrid, and to the English The Illustrated London News. But it was in the periodical Lanterna Mágica, founded with Guilherme de Azevedo (1839 - 1882) and Abílio Guerra Junqueiro (1850 - 1923) in 1875, that Pinheiro introduced his best-known character, Zé Povinho, a shrewd, crafty figure who became a Portuguese national symbol.
During his years in Brazil, from 1875 to 1879, he produced intensely for several Rio de Janeiro press outlets, creating political cartoons and caricatures of public figures with innovative creativity and a boldness unusual in the Brazilian context of the time. Among the illustrations published in O Mosquito, anticlerical cartoons and political satire are frequent. Dom Pedro II is portrayed in numerous cartoons commenting on current political events. In one of them, from 1876, titled A Questão Religiosa [The Religious Question], he shows the emperor admitting defeat before Pope Pius IX, in a gesture of submission to the demands of the clergy.
In 1877, he launched the periodical Psit!, in which the characters Psit and Arolae appear, and, the following year, O Besouro, for which he created the character Fagundes. In 1878, he engaged in a public dispute with Angelo Agostini (1843 - 1910) in a series of cartoons published weekly in the pages of O Besouro and the Revista Ilustrada, to which Bordalo and Agostini respectively contributed.
His satires of the political and social situation of the empire earned him the antagonism and enmity of powerful politicians, probably the motive for the two attacks he suffered and for his decision to return to Portugal in 1879. That year, in Lisbon, with Guilherme de Azevedo, he founded the periodical António Maria, an illustrated newspaper in which Bordalo reviewed the most important aspects of Portugal's political, social and artistic life over almost a decade. In Portugal, too, he faced reactions to his political positions. In 1885, to replace António Maria, he founded with his son Manuel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro the newspaper Pontos nos ii [Dotting the i's], which closed in 1891 as a result of the censorship imposed on an article about the Porto Revolt. From 1891 to 1898, he resumed publication of António Maria, in which he again featured the character Zé Povinho, the artist's favorite commentator.
In 1880, with the artists António Ramalho, João Vaz (1859 - 1931), José Malhoa (1854 - 1933), António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850 - 1893) and Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1857 - 1929), among others, he created the Grupo do Leão, so called because the artists met at the Café Leão de Ouro in Lisbon. Distancing itself from academicism, the group was responsible for the naturalist renewal of Portuguese art. That same year, he launched the first series of the Álbum das Glórias [Album of Glories], comprising more than forty drawings of public figures known as portraits-charges, bringing together illustrations of renowned personalities. The second series was published in 1885, and the third in 1902. In a famous caricature criticizing the emperor's frequent travels, Bordalo depicts Dom Pedro II in a frock coat, with his travel bag open and his toucan-feather mantle spilling out, in a hotel room where the scepter and crown rest on a chair.
In 1884, in the Portuguese town of Caldas da Rainha, he founded the Fábrica de Faianças with his brother Feliciano Bordalo Pinheiro (1847 - 1905). He devoted himself to ceramic production. In 1889, he directed the construction of the Portuguese Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition, where he exhibited some of his ceramics, for which he received gold and silver medals. He contributed to many Portuguese periodicals and produced illustrations and covers for books. In 1899, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro and exhibited on Rua do Ouvidor, among other pieces, the Jarra Beethoven [Beethoven Vase], presented to the then President of the Republic Campos Sales, which is now in the collection of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA.
In 1900, for the periodical A Paródia [The Parody], he published a series of cartoons depicting, among other subjects, politics (A Grande Porca [The Great Sow]), finance (O Grande Cão [The Great Dog]), the economy (A Galinha Choca [The Broody Hen]) and parliamentary rhetoric (O Grande Papagaio [The Great Parrot]). After the caricaturist's death, the poet Artur Ernesto de Santa Cruz Magalhães, an admirer and collector of his work, founded the Museu Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro in his own residence in 1916. The museum, which displays the artist's graphic and ceramic output, became a municipal museum in 1924. Over time, the collection grew through donations from the family and the incorporation of private collections.
For Pedro Corrêa do Lago, although Bordalo Pinheiro's contribution was significant to the development of caricature and the press in Brazil, his drawing, in pen and ink or lithography, freer and more stylized, did not manage to establish a style, probably because of the strong influence of Angelo Agostini, whose drawing was more detailed and precise.1 Despite the brevity of his stay in Rio de Janeiro, Bordalo Pinheiro's prestige in the local cultural scene was considerable, not only in the history of Brazilian caricature, but also in the political life of the Second Reign.
Note
1 LAGO, Pedro Corrêa do. Caricaturistas brasileiros: 1836-1999. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Artes, 1999. p. 44.
Critiques
"The spontaneity with which he composed his works is well attested, not only by the very character of his art, but also by the testimony of those who knew him closely, among them Saavedra Machado. According to this testimony, his usual way of working 'was talking and laughing, often accompanying with his own posture, gesture and expression the postures, gestures and expressions of those he caricatured. Around the table where the Master sat, all his collaborators were absorbed in the work they produced. Bordalo alone began and finished his share of the task with the utmost nonchalance.'
Hence the great scale of this highly personal art, now graceful, now violent, but always wholesome, always direct and clear, without half-measures, a truly remarkable body of work, for it includes, besides his exclusive contributions to ephemeral periodicals such as A Berlinda, Lanterna Mágica and Psit!, others that lasted much longer, as with O Mosquito and O Besouro in Brazil (1875-79), and with the Portuguese newspapers O Antônio Maria, Os Pontos nos ii and A Paródia, filling the period from 1880 to 1900 almost without interruption.
Beyond what he left us in O Besouro, where his wit as a commentator of the pencil is best revealed, in all its maturity, it is perhaps in O Antonio Maria and A Paródia, between 1880 and 1900, that we find pages well worthy of standing alongside those of the world's greatest caricaturists. And, since he was an impulsive man who placed his love of truth above all else, the view today's observer may form of the subjects of this lively, incisive feature-length film that Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro's art left to posterity will perhaps not be overly flattering".
Herman Lima
LIMA, Herman. Os precursores (conclusão). In: ______. História da caricatura no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, 1963. v. 3, p. 894-896.
"Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro is the greatest exponent of caricature in Portugal and played an important role in 19th-century Brazilian caricature, living in Rio de Janeiro from 1875 to 1879 and contributing intensely to several organs of the illustrated press such as O Mosquito, O Besouro and Psst!.
His output was abundant and innovatively creative for the Brazilian press of the time, to which Bordalo brought the richness and acuity of his assured line, developed by observing the customs of the people and the behavior of the elite in Portugal.
His exceptional draftsmanship and experience in the Portuguese press in fact prepared him for an equally delightful approach to the reality he would discover in late-Empire Rio de Janeiro. Since his youth, Bordalo had frequented Brazilian intellectuals living in Portugal (...) and ardently wished for an opportunity to settle in Brazil. His four-year stay in the country was extremely fruitful, both for his career and for the consolidation of caricature in our press, but his more advanced drawing did not manage to reorient the Brazilian illustrated press, marked by the overwhelming influence of Ângelo Agostini.
His line was perhaps too sophisticated for a Brazilian audience more accustomed to the almost photographic precision of the lithographic portraits of Agostini and his followers, and it took another 20 years after his departure for another Portuguese genius, Julião Machado, to truly establish a new style among us, decisively influencing the next generation. (...) But there is no doubt that, with Bordalo's departure, caricature in Brazil lost a driving force of remarkable creativity who could have exerted a decisive influence in accelerating its development".
Pedro Corrêa do Lago
LAGO, Pedro Corrêa do. Caricaturistas brasileiros: 1836-1999. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Artes, 1999. p. 40 e 44
Collections
Museu Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro - Lisboa (Portugal)
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Group Exhibitions
1868 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Sociedade Promotora das Bellas Artes Exhibition
1870 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Sociedade Promotora das Bellas Artes Exhibition
1871 - Madrid (Spain) - Madrid International Exhibition - award winner
1872 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 9th Sociedade Promotora das Bellas Artes Exhibition
1874 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 10th Sociedade Promotora das Bellas Artes Exhibition
1876 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 24th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Aiba
1881 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Grupo do Leão, at Sociedade de Geografia
1881 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Grupo do Leão, at Jornal do Comércio de Portugal
1889 - Paris (France) - Paris International Exposition - gold and bronze medals
Posthumous Exhibitions
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition. Black in Body and Soul, at Fundação Casa França-Brasil
2001 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Caricaturists, at Instituto Cine Cultural
2004 - São Paulo SP - Paper Cabinet, at CCSP
Source: Itaú Cultural
