Victor Meirelles (Florianópolis SC 1832 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1903)
Pintor, draftsman, professor.
Victor Meirelles de Lima began his artistic studies around 1838, with Argentine engineer Marciano Moreno. In 1847, he moved to Rio de Janeiro and enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA where, in 1849, he began the course on Historical Painting. In 1852 he won the prize for travel abroad and the following year he went to Italy. In Rome attends, in 1854, the classes of Tommaso Minardi (1787 - 1871) and, later by Nicola Consoni (1814 - 1884), with whom he carries out a series of studies with a live model. With the extension of the pension granted to him, he continues his training by studying in Paris where, in 1857, he enrolled at the École Superiéure des Beaux-Arts [Escola Superior de Belas Artes], attending Leon's classes. Cogniet (1794-1880) and then receiving guidance from his disciple Andrea Gastaldi (1810-1889). During the period in which he remains abroad, he corresponds to Porto Alegre (1806 - 1879). He returns to Brazil in 1861 and, a year later, is appointed professor of historical painting at AIBA. Between the years 1869 and 1872 he executed two large screens, the Humaitá passage and the Battle of Riachuelo. In 1879 he participated in the General Exhibition of Fine Arts, exhibiting the Battle of Guararapes alongside the Battle of Avaí by Pedro Américo (1843 - 1905). The presentation of the two works generates great controversy and an intense debate in the artistic environment. From 1886 onwards, he began to dedicate himself to the execution of panoramas. Among them, the following stand out: the circular panorama of the city of Rio de Janeiro, made in Belgium, together with Henri Langerock (1830 - 1915) and the entry of the Legal Fleet into the port of Rio de Janeiro in 1894, produced in that same year.
Critical Comment
It is born in Nossa Senhora do Desterro, present-day Florianópolis, and goes to Rio de Janeiro in 1847, where he studies at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA. In 1852, he obtained the AIBA travel abroad award. In Rome, he is guided by the artists Tommaso Minardi (1787 - 1871) and Nicola Consoni (1814 - 1884) and comes into contact with the painting "Purista", in which the drawing is more tenuous and delicate than that of the neoclassical tradition and the colors are softened. He studies the works of Italian masters, especially the artists of the Venetian school, such as Titian (ca.1488 - 1576) and Paolo Veronese (1528 - 1588), by whom he expresses special interest. He obtains a renewal of the boarding house and studies in Paris, starting in 1857, with the artist Léon Cogniet (1794 - 1880) and later with Andrea Gastaldi (1826 - 1889). During the time he resides abroad, he maintains intense correspondence with Porto Alegre (1806 - 1879), painter and writer, director of AIBA between 1854 and 1857. After more than eight years of absence, he returns to Brazil in 1861. The following year, he was appointed professor of Historical Painting and Landscape at AIBA, a position he held until 1890.
At his stay in Paris, he paints the painting The First Mass in Brazil (1861). The critic Gonzaga Duque (1863 - 1911) comments on this work, highlighting its historical importance: "... the first Mass could only be what is there. It must be, forcibly, that set, that is, an altar, a priest officiating, a another serving as an acolyte, the garrison of the Portuguese armada watching the divine office, the Gentile approaching, cautious, admiring, imitating what he saw. Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha (ca.1451 - 1500). The document, published only in 1817, assumes a primordial role in the history of Brazil. At the moment the painting is painted, the Indianist theme is present in romantic literature and in the visual arts. The poetic sense of organization of the groups that participate in the scene and the chromatic range stands out, with very subtle passages of tones. The main scene extends in the distance and the spectator's gaze is directed towards the cross at the top. In the background, the serene landscape opens, bathed by a soft light, in which the tropical vegetation is present. The picture has a contemplative atmosphere. Meirelles creates an image of history that can hardly be forgotten and that for many sectors of the 19th century intelligentsia is the first great Brazilian work of art.
The screen Moema (1866) is inspired by the song VI of the epic poem Caramuru. (1781), by Frei José de Santa Rita Durão (1722 - 1784), who, like other literary texts from the period, deals with the Indianist theme linked to the national imagination. The poem narrates the misadventure of India that, abandoned by the Portuguese Caramuru, throws himself into the sea and follows the ship on which he is leaving. In the painting, the naked body, bathed by the waves on the beach, is exposed in the foreground, the face reveals an exotic beauty. The painter creates a sensual image that, at the same time, causes strangeness. It reveals a poetic feeling in the representation of the landscape.
Throughout his career, he receives several orders from official paintings, including the Battle of Riachuelo (ca.1882), in which, with the naturalistic technique of representation, he explores the triumph and destruction associated with the combat. At the General Exhibition of Fine Arts, in 1879, the canvases of the Battle of Guararapes, by Victor Meirelles and the Battle of Avaí, by Pedro Américo (1843 - 1905) are presented, which marked an era in painting Brazilian. A controversy is created in the press, in relation to the two canvases, considered antagonistic.
With the proclamation of the Republic, the direction of Aiba is modified, which is renamed the National School of Fine Arts - ENBA. Proposals for renewal in the teaching of the arts appear and former teachers, such as Victor Meirelles, are exonerated. He becomes marginalized, as he is identified as the official painter of the monarchy. Since 1885, looking for an alternative to historical painting and official orders, he has created a panoramas company in the city of Rio de Janeiro. At the end of his life, he survives the public displays of his panoramas and, melancholy, regrets that the public has forgotten his paintings. From the first panorama, exposed in Brussels and Paris, in 1889, only six studies were preserved. In these, the landscape is represented with a balanced distribution of tones, and the view of the spectator is invited to walk through the variety of passages, from the semi-obscurity of the vegetation to the luminosity of the atmosphere.
Vitor Meirelles plays an important role in the formation of several artists, in the second half of the 19th century, due to his long career as a teacher. It stands out, above all, for the qualities of his painting: the exquisite design and the exquisite tonal combination in canvas worked with feeling and poetry.
Notes
1 DUQUE, Gonzaga. Brazilian art. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995. p.173. (art: essays and documents).
Criticism
"Victor Meirelles was greeted by the most conservative critic - Araújo Viana, for example, proclaims it a 'culminating individuality and undying in national painting' - and denied by the adherents of modern art. In fact, he did not assimilate the new trends of the 19th century: he progressed on the academicism of the French mission for having sought inspiration from the land and race and was motivated in the Gentiles, both in the first mass in Brazil and in Moema and other canvases - presence of Indianism, which was one of the characteristics of literary romanticism in Brazil. feeling and poetry hovered in his canvases, above conventions, more emotional than cerebral, he constituted the replica of Pedro Américo".
Celso Kelly
art in Brazil. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1979. p. 553.
"We seem to have no doubt that Victor Meirelles then used art as an education assistant, seeking to call, attract to his exhibition, the schoolchildren, so that they would receive new knowledge. (...) We consider 'Victor Meirelles the precursor of the use of art as an educational factor among us', that is, the one who, among our patricians, first had the idea of using art as a means of dissemination and a complement to education".
Elza Ramos Peixoto
ROSA, Angelo de Proença; Mello Júnior, Donato; PEIXOTO, Elza Ramos; SOUZA, Sara Regina Silveira de. Victor Meirelles de Lima: 1832-1903. Rio de Janeiro, Pinakotheke, 1982.
"The euphoria of the imperial government in the late 1860s and during the following 1970s had allowed, at the same time (Victor Meirelles), orders for canvases commemorating the great events of the Triple Alliance War, in a comparison, keeping the due proportions, on a modest scale, with those of the Napoleonic era... Brazil already had two artists for these official consecrations: Victor Meirelles and Pedro Américo. Minister interested in them: Councilor João Alfredo Correia de Oliveira".
Donato Mello Júnior
Rosa, Ângelo Proença; Mello Júnior, Donato; PEIXOTO, Elza Ramos. Victor Meirelles de Lima: 1832-1903. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1982. p. 109-110.
"Meirelles had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, which outside marked by French teachers coming in 1816, from a good neoclassical strain. The years he had spent in Rome, working mainly with a disciple of Minardi, Nicola Consoni, made him come into contact with the so-called 'Purista' painting - an art in which the drawing is more fragile, tenuous and delicate than those of the tradition inaugurated by David, an art that It slows down the neoclassical anatomical vigor for the benefit of simplified bodies, an art whose colors are smoothed and where an internal geometry presides over the composition -, geometry of calm balance. (...) In Rome of Pius IX, the neoclassical formation It was attenuated, spiritualized, acquiring a definitive way of being that its Parisian period would not know how to erase it. All these principles appear clearly in the first mass, whose project was to establish a harmonious and spiritual moment, where worlds were concerted opposites".
Jorge coli
COLI, Jorge. First Mass and Invention of Discovery. In: NOVAES, Adauto (Org.) The Discovery of Man and the World.São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998. p.107-121.
"For the first time since the time of Debret, the State ordered the artists of large dimensions, aiming to create a set of images of the events of the war to be bequeathed to the following generations. The role of historical painting in education and in the creation of national consciousness had finally become a heritage of institutions.
Victor Meirelles and Pedro Américo were the protagonists of In 1866, Meirelles received from the Minister of the Navy, Affonso Celso, the task of painting a large painting commemorating the Naval Battle of Riachuelo, fought in June 1865 against the Paraguayan forces - a battle considered decisive by the Navy, who had managed to avoid the attack of the opponents' surprise and had established a dominion over the river network that would be decisive for the victory. (...)
With the fall of the monarchical regime and the proclamation of the Republic, 1889, expectations of cultural renewal arise. (...)
Victor Meirelles was the only artist to be marginalized by the regime, who identified him as the official painter of the monarchy. However, he surrounded him with the admiration he had managed to attract from the students and that made him a point of reference for the most sensitive artists of the younger generation.
Imitating the example of Gerveaux in Paris, Meirelles created in 1885 A panoramas company in the city of Rio de Janeiro, recruiting taxpayers and improvising themselves as manager. Panorama painting, showing not only beauty but the degree of urban and industrial development of the capital, had to serve as a propaganda of Brazil with future European migrants, which was to satisfy the demand for free labor caused by the already imminent abolition of the slavery.
The first panorama of Rio de Janeiro, of which only six studies remain in the MNBA, was performed by the artist in Brussels and exhibited in the Belgian capital and in Paris, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1889.
Meirelles also, therefore, sought an alternative to historical painting and official orders, which the Republic would soon deny." Rediscovery, 2000, São Paulo. 19th Century Art. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 years Visual Arts, 2000. P. 109-110,150.
Collective exhibitions
1846 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1852 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 12th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, NA AIBA
1859 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 13th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1860 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 14th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1861 - Paris (France) - Salon de Paris
1862 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1864 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th General Exhibition of Fine Arts AIBA
1865 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1866 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 18th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1867 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 19th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1868 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 20th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1870 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 21st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1872 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 22nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1875 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 23rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts Aiba
1876 - Philadelphia (United States) - Exhibition commemorating the centenary of North American emancipation - Painting Award
1878 - Turin (Italy) - Exhibition of Turin - Gold Medal
1879 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 25th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1883 - Paris (France) - Salon de Paris
1884 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 26th General Exhibition of Belas Arts, in Aiba
1889 - Paris (France) - Universal Exhibition - Gold Medal
Posthetic exhibitions
1940 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective Exhibition: Works of the Great Masters of Painting and its Disciples
1941 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Pedro Américo and Victor Meirelles, at MNBA
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A century of Brazilian painting: 1850-1950, at MNBA
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd São Paulo International Biennial, at the Pavilion of States
1961 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio in Brazilian painting, at the Guanabara State Library
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective, at MNBA
1977 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Aspects of the Brazilian landscape: 1816-1916, at MNBA
1977 - São Paulo SP - MASP masterpiece, at SESC Pompéia
1982 - Florianópolis SC - Exhibition commemorating the sesquicentennial of the birth of Victor Meirelles, at the Santa Catarina Art Museum
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and rupture: synthesis of art and Brazilian culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Preparatory studies of the 19th century, at MNBA
1986 - Belo Horizonte MG - Moment IBM Brazil, at the IBM Cultural Space
1986 - Brasília DF - IBM Brazil moment, at the IBM Cultural Space
1986 - Florianópolis SC - Victor Meirelles: genesis of a genius, at the Santa Catarina Art Museum
1987 - São Paulo SP - The plot of taste: another look About everyday life, at the Bienal Foundation
1987 - São Paulo SP - Brazil painted by national and foreign masters: 18th - 20th centuries, at Masp
1988 - São Paulo SP - Brasiliana: O Homem e a Terra Pinacoteca do Estado
1991 - São Paulo SP - Desire at the Academy: 1847-1916, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Expansion, Order and Defense, at the Historical Museum National
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século 20th Century, at the Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - A critical look at the collection of the 19th century, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil rediscovered, in the Imperial Palace
2000 - Porto Alegre RS - from Frans Post to Eliseu Visconti: National Museum of Fine Arts Collection, at Margs
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Visions of Rio Geyer Collection, at CCBB
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Show. 19th century art, at the Bienal Foundation
2001 - São Paulo SP - 30 Masters of Painting in Brazil, at MASP
2001 - São Paulo SP - Trajectory of light in Brazilian art, at Itaú Cultural
2002 - Niterói RJ - Brazilian art on paper: 19th and 20th centuries, at Solar do Jambeiro
2002 - São Paulo SP - Image and identity: a look at history in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, at the Banco Santos Cultural Institute
2003 - Curitiba PR - Victor Meirelles: an artist from the Empire, at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum
Source: Itaú Cultural
