Stuart Carvalhais

José Herculano Stuart Torrie de Almeida Carvalhais (1887–1961), better known as Stuart Carvalhais, was a multifaceted Portuguese modernist artist. He made his career as a painter, draftsman, illustrator, caricaturist, comic-book author, and graphic artist, but he also involved himself with photography, decoration, set design, and even cinema. He was the founder of Portugal's longest-running strip cartoon.

Early life Carvalhais was born on 7 March 1887, and baptised three days later, in the parish of São Pedro in the municipality of Vila Real in the north of Portugal. He was the son of Margarida Amélia Stuart Torrie, of Scottish and English descent, and José Joaquim de Almeida Carvalhais, a civil servant from a wealthy rural family in nearby Santa Marta de Penaguião, who also contributed humorous pieces to a magazine in Porto. He spent his early childhood in Spain, returning to Portugal in 1891. Between 1901 and 1903 he attended the Royal Institute of Lisbon, which was the first Portuguese institution to offer free secondary, special, and higher education courses, eventually providing more than 50 classes, taught free of charge by renowned professors. He then worked as a tile painter in the studio of the artist Jorge Colaço. Carvalhais was largely self-taught in artistic matters.

Career Carvalhais began to work as a newspaper artist in 1906, publishing his first designs in the comic supplement of the newspaper O Século in that year. In the same newspaper, he made his first attempts at a comic strip, called Triste História de Zé Alonso (The sad story of Zé Alonso). The following year, he began working for comic magazines, producing humorous drawings and caricatures. In 1911, he was one of the people responsible for the establishment of the humorous magazine A Sátira. He collaborated in the founding of the Society of Portuguese Humourists, whose president was Manuel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro, participating in exhibitions organized by this group in 1912 and 1913, the First and Second Exhibitions of Portuguese Humourists, along with Cristiano Cruz, Jorge Barradas, Emmerico Nunes, and Almada Negreiros, among others.

In 1912–13, he spent a few months in Paris, surviving precariously and contributing as an illustrator for the magazines Gil Blas, Le Rire, Le Sourire and Pages Folles. He became a partner of Fausta Moreira (a fishmonger) shortly after returning to Lisbon and, a year later, their only son, Raul, was born. Although a republican (and, later, anti-fascist), his criticism focused on those who deserved it rather than those of a particular political persuasion, and in 1914 he contributed to the satirical monarchist newspaper Papagaio Real, then under the artistic direction of Negreiros. He then began his pioneering comic strip, initially titled Quim e Manecas, in the comic supplement of O Século, the longest-running Portuguese comic strip, with over 500 issues between 1915 and 1953. These two characters gave rise to the first Portuguese comic film in 1916, in which Carvalhais played the father of Manecas. Unfortunately, all copies have been lost. Their house was demolished in 2009. His name was also given to a small square in Lisbon.

A year after his death a book was published praising his work, with testimonies from people who knew and spent time with him. The Bohemian lifestyle of Carvalhais, who had little interest in material goods, inspired the humourist, Osvaldo de Sousa, to produce a book about him entitled Crónicas d'um Stuart, published in 1987. Also in his centenary year, José Pacheco published Stuart e o Modernismo em Portugal. In the same year, a retrospective of his work was organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in its Modern Art Centre in Lisbon.