Victor Meirelles

Victor Meirelles de Lima (18 August 1832 – 22 February 1903) was a Brazilian painter and teacher who is best known for his works relating to his nation's culture and history. From humble origins, his talent was soon recognized, being admitted as a student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He specialized in the genre of history painting, and upon winning the Academy's Foreign Travel Award, he spent several years training in Europe. There he painted his best-known work, Primeira Missa no Brasil. Returning to Brazil, he became one of emperor Pedro II's favorite painters, joining the monarch's patronage program and aligning himself with his proposal to renew the image of Brazil through the creation of visual symbols of its history.

He became an esteemed teacher at the Academy, forming a generation of painters, and continued his personal work by performing other important historical paintings, such as Batalha dos Guararapes, Moema and Combate Naval do Riachuelo, as well as portraits and landscapes, of which the Retrato de Dom Pedro II and his three Panoramas stand out. In his heyday he was considered one of the leading artists of the second reign, often receiving high praise for the perfection of his technique, the nobility of his inspiration and the general quality of his monumental compositions, as well as his unblemished character and tireless dedication to his craft. Meirelles got many admirers both in Brazil and abroad. He received imperial decorations and was the first Brazilian painter to win admission to the Paris Salon, but was also the target of scathing criticism, arousing strong controversies in a period when disputes between academic painters and the early modernists were ignited. With the advent of the Republic in Brazil, for being too linked to the Imperial government, he fell into ostracism, and ended his life in precarious financial conditions, already much forgotten.

“Meirelles’ work is rooted in the Brazilian academic tradition, characterized by an eclectic synthesis of neoclassical, romantic, and realist influences, while also reflecting Baroque and Nazarene elements. After a period of relative obscurity, contemporary criticism has recognized him as a forerunner of modern Brazilian painting and one of the foremost 19th-century Brazilian painters. He is widely regarded as the greatest of his era, creating some of the most celebrated visual interpretations of Brazilian history, which continue to resonate in the country’s culture and are frequently reproduced in school textbooks and other media.

He is the Patron of the 6th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts.

Biography Early life

His early years are obscure and the few sources provide conflicting information. Victor Meirelles de Lima was the son of Portuguese immigrant Antônio Meirelles de Lima and Brazilian Maria da Conceição dos Prazeres, merchants who lived with limited economic resources in the city of Nossa Senhora do Desterro (now Florianópolis). He had a brother, Virgílio. In 1849 he was back in Rio de Janeiro, studying at the Academy, among others, the discipline of historical painting, a genre in which he had his greatest successes. It is said that Meirelles was a brilliant student, excelling in all subjects. In 1852 he won the Travel to Europe Prize with his painting Saint John the Baptist in Prison.

Thus, in 1856 he went to Milan and soon after to Paris. He tried, on the recommendation of Araújo Porto-Alegre, at the time director of the Academy and his main mentor, to be admitted as a student of Paul Delaroche, but the master suddenly died, so he had to look for another direction, finding it in Léon Cogniet, an equally celebrated romantic painter, member of the École des Beaux-Arts and a reference for foreigners who were going to study in Europe. He then studied with André Gastaldi, who was almost the same age as Meirelles, but who had a more advanced view of art and gave him important instruction in colors. His routine, according to reports, was almost monastic, devoting himself entirely to art, and again his studies were considered so good that his scholarship was extended again for another two years. At that time, his production was numerous, standing out among all his works A Primeira Missa no Brasil, executed between 1858 and 1861, which earned him space and praise at the prestigious Paris Salon of 1861, an unprecedented feat for Brazilian artists that had a very positive impact in his homeland. He also became known for his devotion to national causes, which is why he was hired in 1868 by the imperial government to paint about the Paraguayan War, which was in full swing, in a contract that both honored him and gave him good remuneration.

In 1871 he painted Juramento da Princesa Regente, and in 1875 he began the sketches for another great historical work, Batalha dos Guararapes, accepting a project that had been refused by Pedro Américo, who preferred work on his Batalha de Avaí. As he had done before, Meirelles went to the region where the conflict had taken place to conceive the composition with greater historical accuracy. The two battle paintings were exhibited at the Salon of 1879 and both artists received the Grand Prix and the title of dignitaries of the Order of the Rose, but it triggered the greatest aesthetic controversy that had hitherto taken place in Brazil. While some recognized their superlative abilities, hailing them as geniuses and heroes, others accused them of plagiarism and passé. At the same time, two parties were formed, one supporting Meirelles and the other Américo, in the dispute over which of the battle painting was more perfect. The lay public also got involved and the discussion took over the newspapers and magazines for months. Despite receiving much applause, the also numerous criticisms struck Meirelles deeply, throwing him into a state of melancholy tha apparently accompanied him until the end of his life. For a year he managed to get a position as a teacher at the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts,

Disappointed, poor and abandoned, on the morning of a Carnival Sunday, on 22 February 1903, Victor Meirelles died at the age of 71, in the simple house where he lived. The artist was married to Rosália Fraga, who already had a son from a previous marriage, whom Meirelles adopted, but he left no direct descendants and nothing is known about his private life. His widow donated her estate to the National School of Fine Arts, which held a posthumous exhibition in Meirelles honor. The widow died shortly afterwards, in the same year.

According to Carlos Rubens, his biographer, shortly before Meirelles death he would have told a friend and former disciple that if he had another chance he would make his life take other paths, to which the friend replied: "And what other paths would take you to the First Mass?" As history shows, Meirelles current fame rests mainly on this composition.

The Imperial Academy, where Meirelles was educated, was one of the executive arms of this civilizing program, which also sought to move away from the memory of colonial times under Portuguese rule through affiliation to other models of culture, such as France and Italy, where many painters were sent to improve their skills. At the same time that, in cultural terms, dependence on foreign inspiration remained inescapable, typically Brazilian elements that had previously been disowned, such as the indigenous peoples, began to be reintegrated, praised and merged with European references as part of the local roots necessary for the legitimation of national culture, in a synthesis not devoid of contradictions. It was in the Sainte-Geneviève Library, in Paris, that Meirelles found material for studying Brazilian amerindians, and not in Brazil, where the indigenous peoples had long been driven to remote regions, decimated or acculturated. There he studied the documentation and ethnographic records about the natives left by naturalists, and it was there that he came into contact with the letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, which would inspire the backdrop for his creation. An especially significant influence in the idealist sense, in his formative period, was the contact with the production of the Nazarene group, through Johann Friedrich Overbeck and his teachers Tommaso Minardi and Nicola Consoni. The Nazarenes advocated an attitude of purity expressed in an exemplary life and in painting focused on noble themes, where religion played a central role. Meirelles did not become famous for his religious works, which are few, conservative and of secondary importance, and even though he was personally a devout Catholic, he was artistically committed to the proposal of a secular and progressive society, where art had an important civic and pedagogical role to fulfill, but the group's ideals of purity, unblemished life and hard and honest work left their marks on Meirelles personality and work.

His classicism can be seen in the general harmony of the compositions, in its placid character, in its interpretation of nature loaded with poetry, and even when it comes to battles, the impression of movement and violence, which would be expected for such a theme, is in the background, and what stands out is the balanced organization of the set, as the author himself recognized, largely canceling the effect of drama. It is significant that Meirelles used very few of his numerous sketches depicting the most violent and desolate aspects of the battles when he produced the definitive works, but a piece like Passagem de Humaitá could hardly fit into the classic profile, with a drama aspect marked by several authors, such as Carlos Rubens, who considered it a true vision of hell. Even Combate Naval do Riachuelo, which differs greatly from the other in the dramatic aspect, was called a "phantasmagorical allegory" by Mário César Coelho. This dialectic was very old, it was present within the European academies since the 17th century, when the dispute between the followers of Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin arose, who defended the supremacy, respectively, of color over drawing, and of drawing over color. This dispute implied the primacy of reason, orthodoxy and purity of spirit, symbolized by drawing, or that of emotion, irrational intuition and sensualism, symbolized by color, which brought important moral associations in the context of the time. The controversy, in fact, was never resolved. For specialists such as Mario Barata and Lilia Schwarcz, Meirelles production fits more correctly into the eclectic romanticism typical of the second half of the 19th century, with its patriotic and idealistic associations and a certain sentimentality, a tendency that predominated in the period of Pedro II's maturity, and which coincided with the heyday of Brazilian academism. But Jorge Coli, speaking at the same time of Meirelles and Pedro Américo, observed that:

Gonzaga Duque and other intellectuals of his time, who advocated an art more focused on realism and bourgeois themes disconnected from an association with the interests of the State, and who were harsh critics of various aspects of Meirelles's production and academic art in general, reflected the great changes that Brazil was going through. Society and culture were accelerating their updating in many other aspects, the entertainment industry was emerging, technology, science and freedom of thought were on the rise, the bourgeoisie became an increasingly important market and abandoned the role of passive recipient of lessons from aesthetic authorities, making their tastes prevail in an environment increasingly dominated by personal preferences. Social change would have repercussions on the arts such as the modernist movement, whose principles were very opposed to academics. The accusations of plagiarism raised against Batalha dos Guararapes and Primeira Missa are further evidence that the academic tradition in the country was already beginning to wear out as soon as it was consolidated. Among academics, the citation and paraphrase of other people's works and the use of traditional typological and compositional conventions were not only acceptable but even expected elements in the constitution of a work of art that deserved such a name, attesting to the artist's erudite training and his recognition. of the authority of the masters. Indeed, in the academic system, copying works by established masters of the past and present was an essential part of training, and Meirelles left many in this category. Overall he did not create a new language, and his success as a creator of valid symbols to this day is the mark of his originality using traditional resources.

Brazilian academicism did not shy away from absorbing elements of realism in its love of precise detail. Meirelles's works, especially in his final phase, reveal a strong influence of this current in this aspect. In this phase he composed his panoramas, the most important works of the period, and those that bring him closer to the modern universe, both in terms of genre and in the techniques of creation and exhibition, and in their commercial, advertising and educational purposes.

Critical reception and legacy Victor Meirelles was one of the most brilliant graduates of the Imperial Academy and one of the first Brazilian painters to receive recognition abroad. During his heyday he was one of the most respected artists of the Empire of Brazil and one of the most esteemed by the officialdom. For critics aligned with Pedro II’s civilizing program, Meirelles’s generation, with him and Pedro Américo as its leading figures, helped establish a national school of modern painting and was seen as an early avant-garde of its time. João Zeferino da Costa, Modesto Brocos y Gómez, Rafael Frederico, Rodolfo Amoedo, Pedro Peres and Almeida Júnior.

His most important production, recognized during his lifetime, is the one he left in historical painting, and although his portraits and landscapes were also praised in his time, today they are largely forgotten by critics. Jorge Coli, reflecting on the critical consensus, wrote that: "Meirelles has reached the rare convergence of forms, intentions and meanings that make a painting powerfully enter a culture. This image of discovery can hardly be erased, or replaced. It is the first mass in Brazil. It is the powers of art making history."

Meirelles also made many opponents, who considered him outdated and saw in academic conventions nothing but artificiality and empty rhetoric of meaning for the changing times. The exhibition of another of his great compositions, Batalha dos Guararapes, alongside the Batalha do Avaí by Pedro Américo, at the Salon of 1879, gave rise to an unprecedented public debate in the Brazilian art scene. It is estimated that around 80 articles have been published on the event, inaugurating a fertile period for the formation of a body of criticism on aesthetics and ideology in Brazil, addressing controversial topics at the time such as nationalism, the role of criticism and the opposition between the avant-gardes and academic tradition. This exhibition also became memorable because it managed to mobilize virtually the entire population of Rio de Janeiro, with 292,286 visits being recorded over a period of 62 days, demonstrating the enormous interest of the general population in the artistic agitation of those days and in nationalist themes. At the time Meirelles heard it all, being called a genius and a master to a fake and incompetent, signaling the moment in which his career begins to decline. It was reflected in him, and with special poignancy due to his personal prominence and his position as a great symbol of academicism, the irresistible advance of the modernist aesthetic, which opposed everything he represented.

Meirelles also had a personal concern with the educational function of art, in addition to seeing it as a great means of disseminating Brazil abroad, which was in line with the government's official program. According to Sandra Makowiecky, Carlos Coelho and others, this was especially clear about his panoramas. His very significant production places him in a very prominent position in the history of Brazilian art. According to Sandra Makowiecky, for many he is the greatest Brazilian painter of the 19th century. Meirelles, together with his biggest rival, Pedro Américo, managed to produce images of great evocative power, which to this day remain alive in Brazil's collective memory as the canonical visualization of some of its main founding myths. Mário Coelho stated that:

Selected paintings