Josefa Garcia Greno

Maria Josefa Garcia Seone Greno (1850–1902), better known as Josefa Garcia Greno, was a Portuguese-Spanish naturalist painter who was part of the Group of the Lion artists' group.

Early Years Greno was born in the Santa Maria area of Medina-Sidonia in Andalusia in Spain on 1 September 1850. Her father, Captain-General José Garcia Saéz, died when she was four and she and her mother, Maria Seone, went to live in A Coruña in Galicia, where they remained for six years before returning to Andalusia. In Seville, she learned to read, write, embroider, and draw, eventually writing and publishing short stories and poems. However, the intense political instability in Spain led her family to choose to settle in Lisbon, capital of neighbouring Portugal. There, she turned to haute couture and embroidery as a means of supporting herself and her mother.

Marriage and Life in Paris At the age of 20, she met the painter Adolfo César de Medeiros Greno, who was studying painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts under the Portuguese Romantic painter, Miguel Ângelo Lupi. They married on 18 September 1876, in Lisbon. That year, the couple moved to Paris with her mother, so that her husband could continue his academic studies. During this period, she was one of the main models for her husband's paintings, and she also began to learn to paint.

Until 1901, she was a constant presence in exhibitions organized by the Grémio Artístico and the newly founded National Society of Fine Arts, frequenting the salons of the Lisbon cultural elite of the time, associating with writers such as Fialho de Almeida and exhibiting alongside artists such as Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, José Malhoa, Silva Porto, and Fanny Munró. She was also a mentor and painting teacher to several Portuguese artists, including the naturalist painter and bullfighter, Simão Luís da Veiga, and the painter Júlia Hermínia da Conceição Xavier.

The Greno Case While Greno achieved great professional success, her husband followed the opposite path, spending the family's savings. She had a nervous breakdown in 1895, when her husband misappropriated the savings she had accumulated. Her mother died in 1899, which greatly affected Greno, who never again picked up her brushes. On the night of 7 April 1901, Greno fired a shot at her husband, but missed. On the night of 25 to 26 June of the same year, Greno shot her husband four times while he slept. She was taken to the Cadeia do Aljube prison in Lisbon, but following much public support, including from her husband's brother, was transferred to the Rilhafoles Hospital on 2 July 1901. Miguel Bombarda an acclaimed psychiatrist and director of that hospital, forbade visits, and no one from outside the hospital ever saw her alive again. She was initially diagnosed as suffering from delusion and was declared insane by most newspapers of the time. In addition to her mental decline, she was later diagnosed with Bright's disease.

Death Greno died on 27 January 1902 at the Rilhafoles Hospital. An autopsy found that her heart was more than double the weight and size of a normal female heart. She was buried at the Alto de São João Cemetery.

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