Rosalvo Ribeiro (Marechal Deodoro AL 1865 - Maceió AL 1915)
Painter, teacher and naturalist.
In 1872, Rosalvo Alexandrino de Caldas Ribeiro settled in Maceió. Between that year and 1881, he attended the humanities course at the Colégio Bom Jesus. He exhibited for the first time a portrait of the provincial president, Dr. Henrique M. Salles. In 1884, he taught drawing at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios de Maceió [Maceió School of Arts and Crafts] as an assistant.
He received a government grant to study painting at any academy in the country. In 1886, he entered the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes (Aiba) [Imperial Academy of Fine Arts] in Rio de Janeiro. He was a classmate of Eliseu Visconti (1866 - 1944), Fiúza Guimarães (1868 - 1949), Lopes Rodrigues (1861 - 1917), Oscar Pereira da Silva (1867 - 1939) and João Baptista da Costa (1865 - 1926). In 1889, also funded by the Maceió government, he traveled to Paris to continue his studies. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, studying with Jules Lefebvre, Léon Bonnat and Édouard Detaille.
From 1893 onward, he sent works to his home state. He exhibited at the Salon Officiel des Artistes Français between 1896 and 1898. He returned to Brazil in 1901. He became director of the Alagoas State Public Library in 1902. In 1906, he received an honorable mention at the Salão de Belas Artes [Fine Arts Salon] in Rio de Janeiro. He was awarded at the Salão Nacional [National Salon] (Rio de Janeiro) in 1908. In 1910, he took on the project for the equestrian statue of Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca and the square named after him in Maceió. In 1913, he obtained the chair of drawing at the Escola Normal de Maceió [Maceió Teacher Training School]. He also taught at the Escola de Aprendizes Artífices [School of Apprentice Craftsmen]. Two years later, at 48, he died of tuberculosis.
Critical Commentary
Rosalvo Ribeiro was an artist of solid training who followed the same path as the most prominent Brazilian artists of the second half of the 19th century. He studied at the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro and then went to France, where he continued his studies in history painting.
Despite the high quality of his work, Ribeiro's career was to some extent thwarted, whether by his settling in Alagoas after returning to Brazil in 1901 (a state with few opportunities for artistic work) or by his early death at 48.
Apart from the portraits he made of important local figures in Maceió, a large part of his production is concentrated in the earlier French period. From it one may highlight his predilection for military themes, although he did not produce many such works, and for genre paintings, whose themes, as was customary, turn to a moralizing discourse involving the representation of daily household chores, the family, education and so on.
In the latter type of painting, the affinity of Ribeiro's works, in the Brazilian context, with those of his colleagues Lopes Rodrigues, Oscar Pereira da Silva, João Baptista da Costa and José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (1850 - 1899) is striking. From the 1880s, artists of his generation began to turn their eyes no longer to a type of painting that privileged the notable deeds of national heroes, but to scenes that, though lacking any epic character, arouse interest by revealing an everyday life that can have grandeur.
Collections
Museu Palácio Floriano Peixoto (MUPA) [Floriano Peixoto Palace Museum] - Maceió AL
Group Exhibitions
1886 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exposição de alunos [Students' Exhibition], at Aiba - small gold medal
1898 - Paris (France) - Salão dos Artistas Franceses [Salon des Artistes Français]
1906 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 13ª Exposição Geral de Belas Artes [13th General Exhibition of Fine Arts], at Enba - 1st degree honorable mention
1907 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 14ª Exposição Geral de Belas Artes [14th General Exhibition of Fine Arts], at Enba
Posthumous Exhibitions
1948 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospectiva da Pintura no Brasil [Retrospective of Painting in Brazil], at MNBA
1987 - São Paulo SP - O Brasil Pintado por Mestres Nacionais e Estrangeiros: séculos XVIII - XX [Brazil Painted by National and Foreign Masters: 18th - 20th Centuries], at Masp
Source: Itaú Cultural
