What do you feel when looking at a landscape like this?
Mystery, transcendence, spirituality?

António Carneiro was an artist who worked with the invisible and with transcendent matter, in addition to the many portraits he produced, landscape was one of the most obvious themes in his vast pictorial work.
Landscapes that reveal different states of mind and geographies that quickly transport us to the lines of the sea, but also to the Portuguese rural interiors.
One of these interiors, which would turn out to be one of the open-air ateliers, was Amarante, more specifically the Solar de Gatão, rural refuge and stronghold of the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes. The friendly relationship between Carneiro and Pascoaes was based on many common points, among them the “uneasiness of distances, distances, absences, spectral, shadowy beings, and landscapes of the spirit, in short, of nostalgia understood as exemplary metaphysics.”[1]
After Teixeira de Pascoaes left the direction of the magazine A Águia, in 1917, a fact that precipitated the poet’s retreat from Marânus to his family manor, António Carneiro traveled more frequently to the slopes of Marão, to visit the his poet friend and produce works of drawing and painting (Castro, 1997).
Over several lengthy walks, the poet and the painter wove dialogues, where the Marão, the Amaranth houses and the flow of the Tâmega river filled the canvas of a living picture, but would also end up marking the writing of an e another’s brushes. In addition to the natural landscapes of Maranhão, Retratista das Almas, shared intimate and meditative moments in long evenings by the fireplace, a way of accessing the times of early childhood.
With these Marânus retreats, António Carneiro took the opportunity to work and meditate, but essentially to cultivate his friendship with Teixeira de Pascoaes, where he constantly drew and painted landscapes, surroundings and family figures.

Castro, L. (1997). António Carneiro. Pintura portuguesa do século XIX. Edições Inapa, S.A.

Sofia Mesquita,

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