The
biggest XIX century Brazilian painter steps from Desterro to
Paris and Rio de Janeiro
By Regis Mallmann
Owner
of an unusual talent, Victor Meirelles de Lima signed his name
in Brazil's history throughout a vast pictorial work, made up
by about a hundred of historical paintings, portraits and panoramas.
He starts to track his career of glories still in the first
half of the XIX century, in a moment that the country lives
the neo-classicism euphoria as a result of the French school
influence which changed the ways of world painting. The former
Brazilian painting have a colonial simplistic character and
without universal influence, but the neo-classical style shaped
and gave personality to national visual arts, in a move that
changed centenarian concepts and the Brazilian image in the
international art scenario.
Born on August 18, 1832, in the calm Nossa Senhora do Desterro,
Victor Meirelles was a simple, even poor boy. Antonio Meirelles
de Lima e Maria da Conceição Prazeres, a couple
of Portuguese merchants who arrived at the capital of Santa
Catarina to start a new life, had a son who always demonstrated
a flair for drawing. The village where they live was not bigger
than most colonial towns at that time, being possible to count
on its houses in one day, with its dust roads and a social rhythm,
and an everyday life in accordance to an urban center settled
in an island nearly a kilometer far from the continent. A distance
that, therefore, did not create an isolating situation as supposed
by its name Desterro (exile), on the contrary, it had a relatively
active cultural life.
In this environment the boy Victor lives his first years, spending
his time among activities common to all children at his age.
Between the games and the studies, he used to reproduce images
that do not show any uniqueness or, even for a layman, did not
demonstrate a genius talent. His parents, however, with some
financial sacrifice, decide to sponsor improvement classes for
the boy, encouraged by their kid's performance with graphite
and also motivated by some friends. The task is entrusted to
an Argentinean immigrant, the engineer Marciano Moreno, who
is the first to instruct him the basic techniques of drawing.
After taking the first artistic steps, the genius-like art of
Victor Meirelles gets formed and becomes clearer to all. The
images he starts to transfer to paper from then on are more
vigorous, have more personality and depict the stroke of someone
spectacularly gifted. At that time, a series of happenings starts
to change his destiny forever. And luck, as it seems, has always
waved at him. When passing by Desterro for an official conference,
the imperial counselor Jerônimo Francisco Coelho hears
about the prodigious boy, said to be the author of wonderful
paintings. It is outlined then the start of the educational
process of the artist who would leave an artwork legacy which
is mixed up with the history of the time he lived in.
ACADEMY
Curious to meet the young artist, counselor Coelho goes after
those who was praised as a true phenomenon. What the counselor
sees confirms everything he was told: secure stroke drawings,
live color images that stand out, true wonders considering the
author's was only 14 years old. Excited by his discovery, he
asks Victor to produce some work, resulting in two artworks,
one watercolor depicting Desterro from the view of governor's
palace and a pencil study of a boy. They were sent to Rio de
Janeiro, where both of them pleased the board of the Fine Arts
Imperial Academy and entered the general exposition in December
1846.
This is an essential fact for the artist's trajectory. He is
praised everywhere and invited to study at the reputed school,
a radiant academic center of visual arts in the country where
talented youngsters would come from all over the nation, from
the North to the South. Money will not be the problem for him,
at least at the beginning, since a patron group is sponsoring
the studies and housing expenses in the capital where he arrives
in February 1847, not yet 15 years old, to attend to the drawing
classes.
While it is the patron's duty to pay for the study expenses,
he finds shelter at a cousin's house, the Portuguese João
Moreira da Costa Lima, who later on becomes a great friend and
invited Victor to be his best man at his wedding in 1849. What
happens from then on is the polishing up of a great painter's
talent, that is confirmed with the laurels medal, an award won
at the first year of academy and soon brought by him to his
parents while visiting his home town.
Victor Meirelles finds Rio de Janeiro a very different city
from Desterro where he spent his first 14 years. The empire's
capital city has an effervescent rhythm, it breathes European
air and the scents of the nobles' French perfumes, an elite
that socially and politically rules. The new model established
since the independence and the end of the colonial period 25
years before, imposed new dynamics to the country that is already
going through changes following this process.
It is a time when industrialization is getting started, the
Emperor Dom Pedro II supported a project, although with some
doubts, that would open Brazil's doors to the world, specially
to England which was the major industrial empire of the world.
In this environment, the painter settles in the capital to fully
dedicate himself to the studies.
He stays in Rio de Janeiro for two seasons before going back
to Santa Catarina. Desterro hosts him differently. On the portraits
he paints to raise funds, Victor Meirelles shows that the studies
were being critical for his education. Portrait of Marciano
Moreno, who was his first teacher, and View of Desterro, Current
Florianópolis are mada at this period.
When he returns to Rio de Janeiro in 1848, he subscribes again
to the Fine Arts Imperial Academy, but this time in the historic
painting class, an expertise he develops with excellence and
that qualifies him to have his name of the highest account in
court, including by the emperor. His painting is ruled by the
academic model, followed by any fine arts institution in the
world at that time, when the world was turning to a review of
the classic in several areas from architecture to painting.
Within this model, the Santa Catarina born painter was someone
who best did the homework.
NEOCLASSICISM
The comprehension of Victor Meirelles' work goes necessarily
through the understanding of the neoclassic style, when a return
to Greco-Roman principles sustained values not only on the perfect
work of art mimicking nature's most precious details, but also
seeking the maximum possible resemblance to what the classic
Greek and the Renaissance Italians had already produced.
The academics only reinforced this tendency imposing on the
students the style in vogue, making them exhaustively repeat
the concepts held within. In the Fine Arts Imperial Academy
classes, young visionary Victor ended up absorbing the core
of these influences, reflected in nearly all his paintings from
then on.
He kept contact with his great masters from the Fine Arts Imperial
Academy, painters who taught their students the basics of a
quality work and with new information about art. Among them
were Manoel Joaquim de Melo Corte-Real and Joaquim Inácio
da Costa Miranda, who coached him the fundamentals of figurative
drawing, and José Correia de Lima, a follower of the
French artist Debret - one of the introducers of academics in
Brazil - and who was responsible for teaching him the knowledge
of historic painting for three consecutive years, between 1849
and 1852.
As a tradition in the academy, the students used to take part
in incentive contests while studying, and with Victor it was
not different. He brilliantly concludes all the subjects he
subscribed for, and ends up winning the 7th Europe Travel Prize
with the painting St John Baptist in Prison. He travels in 1853
and has the training period renewed for three times, staying
abroad for the next eight years.
EUROPE
Still very young - he was not yet 21 - Victor Meirelles departures
to Europe carrying a great responsibility. He had to reward
his sponsors all the investment they were doing, a result that
he knew depended on the longest possible time dedicated to his
improvement. He arrives in France in June 1853, at the Havre
port, and soon to Paris for a quick passage before going to
Marseilles, from where he goes to Rome, his ultimate destination.
In the Italian capital, the Eternal City, the native of Santa
Catarina would have the opportunity to closely see some of the
greatest artistic treasures of mankind. With a forming spirit,
under the influence of this millenary art patrimony, Victor
meets two other Brazilians: Agostinho José da Motta and
Paliére Grandjean Ferreira, both former students of the
Fine Arts Imperial Academy who also were improving their knowledge
in Italy.
These colleagues introduce him into the brilliant and rich world
of Roman art and indicate the studios for him to have classes.
He firstly seeks the teaching of Tommaso Minardi who, even being
an acknowledged professor, kept a too severe teaching model,
preventing his students to produce works that would go against
the academic rules. Therefore, Victor opted for another master
and started having classes with Nicolau Consonni, a member of
the reputable Saint Lucas Academy.
He starts then a dedicated and valuable drawing course with
live models much helpful for the historic compositions he would
produce years later. A rigid discipline marked these meetings
when nothing could break the young student's concentration before
human figures and statues that he transfers to paper. However,
Victor was not limited to this environment and extended his
learning to his free time, when he chose to watercolor paint,
letting imagination go free, and forging a quite particular
style.
After Rome, on a second stage of his learning, he goes to Florence,
one of the city homes of Renaissance art that fascinated him
so much and where he really finds abundant material for the
education and qualification of his talent. There he has contact
with Renaissance relics held in palaces as Uffizi Gallery and
Palazzo Pitti, and in the churches of St Mary of Fiore, St Croce
and St Marco, temples where the greatness of Venetian art takes
him, as a result of its rich details and colors.
Among the artists he then admires, Paolo Veronese is the one
that most calls his attention. Victor copies his paintings as
well as tries to repeat the richness of Ticiano, Tintoreto,
Lorenzo Sotto and Campagnuolo's paintings, among others, an
activity that teaches him more than spending weeks inside a
classroom studying theories about painting. He gathers knowledge
and make his scholarship financed by the Brazilian government
worth. Three years later, in 1856, his scholarship is lengthened
for a three new years period which granted him to extend his
profitable European season.
LEARNING
The extended time for his studies abroad is a result of a positive
evaluation done by his masters of the Fine Arts Imperial Academy
on the works Victor regularly sent to Brazil. In this second
moment, together with the extra training time news he received
a studies plan to accomplish. They would lead him to historic
painting, always within the behavior demanded by the Academy
to its pupils. The task was not difficult for the young painter,
and he starts another part of his European journey through museums,
galleries, palaces, squares and every place where there was
something he could observe and translate on canvas or paper.
He goes to Milan for a short while and then to Paris, still
the greatest cultural center of those brilliant years of the
XIX century. However, he finishes his first original work before
that, The Scourge of Christ, which was analyzed by the Fine
Arts Imperial Academy and, in 1859 became the passport for another
period in Europe. The work shows the Italian influence on his
painting, mainly by its religious character that would appear
in a great number of his later productions.
In the French capital, he enters the effervescent romantic climate
that spreads throughout visual arts, having among others, reputed
artists like Paul Delaroche. The dream of having classes with
Delaroche had to be forgotten because the master suddenly died,
so the Brazilian takes orientation from another defender of
romanticism and member of the Fine Arts School, Léon
Cogniet, also a reference for foreigners studying in Europe.
After Cogniet, he stays under the orientation of Andre Gastaldi,
who has the same age as Victor, but whose general knowledge
on how to produce a painting were far ahead. The Brazilian painter
developed in this period the composition sense for the complementary
colors. With the help from this friend, he learned how to better
distribute the paints on the canvas and also how to improve
their mix on the palette. A generous production is the period
main feature, so numerous artworks from it are at the Fine Arts
National Museum and at
the Fine Arts School, both in Rio de Janeiro.
THE
PROTECTOR
During all this years abroad, Victor Meirelles always kept contact
with Manoel de Araujo Porto-Alegre, director to the Fine Arts
Imperial Academy between 1854 and 1857, a man with an accurate
power of observation, responsible for foreseeing the young painter
native of Santa Catarina as a great art promise. Always aware
of the steps his young protected was taking in distant lands,
Porto-Alegre was the spokesman of the youngster among the other
scholar colleagues who analyzed the artworks coming from Europe.
In their frequent letters, he always advised Victor on the right
steps he should take and kept him informed on everything that
was said and thought about his production. A master who the
artist had in great account and that supervised his trajectory
with father's eyes, trying to keep him in the most interesting
way, that is, within the academic art style. In a certain manner,
he always managed to alert him about the risks of joining the
contrary flows to this movement, those that presented a new
vision over art, seeking for inspiration on everyday themes
and not on classical and religious images any more.
The French-Italian stage that modeled Victor Meirelles into
an artist with a global view, made him keep himself as a man
of principles, who did not waste a chance of enabling his talent
for an academic project which guarantees him everything he needs,
from his earnings to the advisory of important names that believed
in his talent. It is said that he did not get involved, or if
so very little, with the worldly pleasures in the cities he
passed by. He kept, on the contrary, an almost monastic life,
having eyes only for his work.
A dedication shown in his artworks from this period and that
were not few. In Paris, he painted The Bachant, also called
The Faunus and the Bachant, a painting which gathers elements
that prove how much he learned about the work on a naked model.
A work that also reveals his profound researcher side that seeks
for support to compose his pictures, in this case mythology,
in an ensemble on which the academic aspect appears in the drawing,
in the shape, in the chiaroscuro and in other elements that
characterize the style.
In 1859, Victor receives a letter from Manoel de Araújo
Porto-Alegre taken to Europe by the hands of the young student
Pedro Américo from Paraíba who was being sent
by the Fine Arts Imperial Academy to have classes with Léon
Cogniet. The letter brought suggestions to the painter for a
theme to be used on the artwork the Academy was asking for and
will guarantee him two more years of training. Porto-Alegre,
who had left the school direction two years before, but was
always in contact with the pupil, asked him to find inspiration
on the letter that Pero Vaz de Caminha had written to the king
of Portugal 400 years before, when Cabral's fleet landed in
Brazil in April 1500.
FIRST
MASS
Acording to Porto-Alegre, the first historical document to make
reference to the contact between the Europeans and the Brazilian
Indians was essential for Victor to accomplish the historic
artwork of great dimension he was being asked. The artist barely
knew that this was the hard core of what will be later on considered
his most important painting, First Mass in Brazil, from 1860.
A work in which he could express what he learned, gathering
in an image his solidly based Christian education and thoughts
always cultivated, which became later on the themes for several
other artist's productions.
While forging the images of the future canvas in his mind, Victor
Meirelles continues his training process in Paris, but now he
has the objective of accumulating more information and knowledge
that will contribute towards the production of what is to become
his first and greatest historic artwork. In Saint Genoveva library,
he reads books that show him the ways for a better comprehension
of the habits and costumes of that time, essential for the painting
composition. A draft of the painting is sent to Brazil, a work
that took part in the Academy expositions of 1859 and 1860,
already causing good impressions among the public. He does not
start the work without first accepting some suggestions from
his French master Robert Fleury who followed Victor's activities
since the departure of Gastaldi to Turin.
Having all the adjustments been made and with enough material
and financial resources to subsidize the needed time to accomplish
the painting, he starts to work in a process that would take
two years. When presented to the jury of the 1861 Paris Salon,
First Mass in Brazil is accepted with praise, thus assuring
the participation in the grand exposition, the first time for
Brazilian art, that so far had not had a representative in an
international exposition. Victor Meirelles translated into this
artwork all the precepts of a career that had started 15 years
before, and that quickly introduced him into the most respectable
context of national and international art.
Having constructed an image that was exactly the way the conquerors
supposed had been their arrival to the new land - actually,
a first mass was celebrated in the fleet main ship - the artist
recreated an everyday scene in which values and power are expressed,
showing the cross and the altar in the center, the conquerors
dominating the spectacle and the Indians as spectators of that
historical moment. The painting depicts all the range of academic
precepts, uniting a historic fact with human figures and the
landscape, everything permeated with colors and epic forms.
After this production, the author would reach immortallity.
First Mass in Brazil was the last project developed by Victor
Meirelles in Europe. Already glorified and raised to the pantheon
of the art geniuses, he returns to Brazil in the middle of 1861,
as a hero praised for having reached such a great achievement
on putting the country's name at the French Salon. At his arrival
in Rio de Janeiro, he is paid much homage, being the decoration
of the Order of the Pink Knight the greatest of them, received
from Dom Pedro II, the same occasion in which the composer Carlos
Gomes was honored for the opera Nights of the Castle.
Exposed in the empire capital, the painting was motive for compliments
and also much criticism, mainly from those who considered it
out of the academic strict standards and credited it to an exaggerated
fruit of imagination. It is right to say that the artwork was
also considered the beginning of a new movement of Brazilian
painting, since it depicts a theme of strong nationalist appeal,
being even exaggeratedly considered the start of the easel painting
in Brazil.
PROFESSOR
VICTOR
The painter was 29, years old when he returns to Brazil, and
as soon as he can, he travels to Desterro to visit his mother
(his father died in 1854, during the first year of studies in
Europe). He stays for a while in the South and then goes back
to Rio de Janeiro where he is named honorary professor of the
Fine Arts Imperial Academy starting one more cycle in his life.
The capital that welcomes him is still a city of imperial features,
with the Court ruling all social, political and economic assignments.
There is slavery of black people, a fester that the abolitionists
do not get tired of fighting against, there are also the republicans
who have the objective to change the administrative model, eliminating
what they consider a backwardness: the imperial model. In this
context, Victor Meirelles assumes as honorary professor and
is soon promoted to acting professor, and after some time to
official of the Academy. As a master, he transfers everything
he learned to a generation of disciples, to whom he dedicates
full attention and that, according to countless statements,
shows him as a man of unquestionable character, always ready
to dedicate himself to those with difficulties. He is also patient
and thorough, making his students follow all the steps to compose
a painting, since the theme discussion and the elements that
will compose it, passing through the draft production, crayon
and charcoal drawing, and partial studies on the characters,
among other procedures.
In 1866, still as a professor at the Fine Arts Imperial Academy,
the fame and self-sacrifice of Victor Meirelles to the national
causes qualifies him to be indicated by the government for a
task never performed before, the depiction of heroic actions
of the Brazilian army at the Paraguay War. He is then sought
by the Navy minister, Visconde de Ouro Preto, that personally
names him to perform this task, a major project hard to be executed,
since it would involve the presence of the artist in the battlefield.
It is a financially attractive and honored contract, and the
painter accepts it with no doubt. Therefore, he embarks to war
in 1868, installing an actual studio inside the main ship of
the Brazilian fleet at the conflict. For almost six months,
he collects impressions and makes studies, stuff taken to Rio
de Janeiro where he exiles himself in the St Anthony Convent
to work full time on the paintings. The results are Humaitá
Passage and Naval Battle of Riachuelo paintings, that translate
through very detailed images the war that was still going on.
The trips also produced another artwork, Accost of Steamboat
Alagoas. Even without the military approach, the painting Moema,
one of his most famous works, was produced in the same period.
MILITARISM
The acceptance of the Victor Meirelles de Lima's work is wide
in all fields, but it is the unquestioned support he has from
the emperor Dom Pedro II that guarantees most of his works.
His prestige is so big that the monarch himself , together with
Princess Isabel and her husband Count D'Eu, pay him a visit
while he is concluding the two first paintings of the historical
war series. This approach had already produced the paintings
Princess Isabel's Wedding in 1864, and Regent Princess' Oath,
in 1871, the last one depicting the ceremony in which Princess
Isabel assumes the imperial position while her father was on
a trip to Europe.
The trajectory of Naval Battle of Riachuelo, a painting from
this period, is curious: it was lost after an exposition in
Philadelphia, United States. In a nonconformist behavior, Victor
Meirelles recreated it. The new version was made in 1883, while
in Paris, where it also was exposed at the French capital's
Salon of that year, being one of the highlights of the exposition.
So big was the success that the Brazilian painter became the
sensation in-between the artists, being afterwards invited to
dinners and receiving generous compliments from the French press.
In 1875, Victor drafts another great war depiction, Guararapes
Battle, a project that was requested to Pedro Américo,
already back from Europe and a recognized name, but he would
rather change the theme, resulting in the Avaí Battle
painting. The paintings from both were exposed by the Academy
in that year and became one of the most polemic issues of the
Brazilian visual arts' history until then, because both of them
are balmed on plagiarism by some critics, which found their
argument in many paintings details.
The discussion about the topic lasted a long time, and even
improves when the magazines and newspapers took part in it,
and there were two parties: the ones who attack the painters
and the ones who defended them. However, this fact does not
affect the painters' image, already being considered almost
national heroes, and it neither takes the shine of Guararapes
Battle, painting in which Victor recreates the confrontation
between troops from Pernambuco and Dutch ones that happened
in April 1648.
As he made before to deal with the historic war genre, the painter
went to the place where the battle had occurred to get the greatest
amount of information and to best visualize the scene in which
he would put his characters. Once again, the result was splendid,
specially because of its dimensions, almost five meters of height
by more than nine meters of width.
ROMANTIC
Another artwork marked this period of great productions, maybe
the most fecund moment of Victor Meirelles' known work, mainly
as a result of the pictures physical dimensions. In the painting
Moema, he is inspired by the tragic character from the epic
poem Caramuru, by Santa Rita Durão. Moema is the Indian
woman who emerges from the painter's palette expressing a romanticism
always present in his trajectory. In Moema, the painter rehearsals
a romance using styles that he could perfectly dominate had
he not kept himself faithful to the academic school, which was
in the end the guideline for all his artistic life. Victor depicts
the action at the beach, the place where appears the young woman's
body who jumps into the troubled water when the man she loves,
the Portuguese Diogo, goes away with another woman.
The trajectory of this artwork hides curious nuances. Exposed
in 1863, the painting did not please neither the public nor
the critics, and the work was difficult to sold because no one
seemed interested in purchasing it. Some historians even attribute
to this fact a possible explanation for Victor start dedicating
himself to painting ordered works with preestablished subjects,
like many portraits he painted which granteed him a good deal
of money, instead of painting spontaneous themes.
Three years later, however, honored at the 1866 Fine Arts Imperial
Academy exposition, the painting will be praised by critics.
Some of them attributed to the artwork the achievement of depicting
national values embodied in the character's legend, who threw
herself into an impossible, and thus, tragic love. The techniques
applied by the artist to compose the painting were also considered
of unquestionable quality.
The production of portraits was a task Victor Meirelles truly
dedicated himself, but they are shadowed by the grandness of
his historic paintings. Although the great number of works from
this genre are part of the collection he left as a legacy, they
do not stand out when we talk about the whole work, even representing
a very difficult and valuable part of his production.
The people he traces are made eternal in his paintings, full
of outstanding realism and emerged from the pencil as a result
of an activity that contributed not only to his improvement,
but also was the best way of making money. He accepted orders
of all kinds. From nobles and wealthy commissioners to medium
class businessmen, all were models for him.
PANORAMAS
The panoramas were also constant in the Santa Catarina born
painter's trajectory, who since the first works with a palette
and a paintbrush reproduced urban landscape settings. From the
first, even simple works he produced in his youth in Desterro
to the wide panoramas from the last period of his life, a long
way of improvement was made.
The results are visual documents of an era, specially Panorama
of Rio de Janeiro, a view from the top of Saint Anthony hill
made in partnership with the Belgium painter H. Langerock. It
was concluded in Belgium, where it was exposed in 1887, after
two years of work.
In 1889, the painting was taken to the Universal Exposition
in Paris and, in the same year, it was displayed for public
visiting in Rio de Janeiro, with its revenues forwarded to Santa
Casa de Misericórdia, in an attitude which demonstrated
Victor Meirelles' generous personality. This period, that also
shows the beginning of his final phase was marked by the production
of two other panoramas, resulting in master-pieces Panorama
of the Legal Fleet Entering - Navy Revolt, and Panorama of Brazil
Discovery, the last one celebrating the fourth centenary of
Brazil discovery.
DISCRIMINATION
The panoramas period is simultaneous with the end of Victor
Meirelles' career. The genius-like painter starts to leave the
scene and a character that would suffer the strongest villainies
enters the stage, after the empire fall and the republic rise
in 1889. A reaction that may be imagined due to the former painter
conections with Brazilian monarchy. Since Victor had always
been aligned with the Imperial power, without having, however
been involved or taken a position, he accompanied the happenings
that would point to a behavior change on the Brazilian society.
Tired of counter orders, people get ready to change the government
in many parts of the country, as formerly had hapened with Dom
Pedro II, the last emperor legal age episody. The Victor Meirelles
enemies' first action was to put him away from his duties at
the Fine Arts Imperial Academy in 1890, after 28 years of dedication,
when it was renamed to Fine Arts National School. The new generation
directors of the school came with new ideas and imposed a new
model of teaching.
To the painter, there is only the activity at Art and Office
Secondary School where he taught for one more year until he
was also deprived from this job, leaving him without any link
to the official academic art activities. One last experience
in this period is the composition of the Panorama of Brazil
Discovery and Invocation to Our Lady of Carmo, that got to be
exposed at the school never find the place were it should be,
the main altar in Rio de Janeiro Cathedral.
?
In an attempt to still keep the link to the academic activity,
Victor Meirelles founds his own art school in 1893, an unsuccessful
project that does not last long. The painter faces difficulties
when he was 60 years old, that he had never faced since he arrived
in Rio de Janeiro 46 years earlie.r At that time he use his
talent as the front door to a world of facilities that allowed
him to have a life without deprivation. He did not even have
motivation to take part in the salons, he survived thanks to
close friends and disciples. In a desperate attitude, he rents
a shed and exposes the circular panorama, from which he uses
the ticket money to survive.
In 1903, ill and abandoned, Victor Meirelles cannot resist and
dies in the morning of February 22 on a Carnival Sunday, leaving
to the country one of the greatest pictorial works that is known.
He was then 71. His widow, Rosália died at the end of
the same year, reducing the family to his only step-son, Eduardo
França.
The drama, however, still follows the destiny of the artist
for a while. The three Rio de Janeiro panoramas, that had been
donated to the government, were stored for some time and there
forgotten and lost afterwards. Time took charge of softening
Victor Meirelles' tragedy at the end of his life, and his artwork
testifies that more than his personal tragedy, the result of
his talent and dedication is what has stayed from one of the
greatest art genius that Brazil has ever seen.
References
1.
RUBENS, Carlos. Vítor Meireles, sua vida e sua obra.
Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1945.
2.
ROSA, Angelo de Proença. Aspectos do desenvolvimento
da composição em Victor Meirelles. Rio de Janeiro:
1966.
3.
ROSA, Angelo de Proença; JÚNIOR, Donato de Mello;
PEIXOTO, Elza Ramos; SOUZA, Sara Regina Silveira de. Victor
Meirelles de Lima 1832-1903. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1982.
4.
JÚNIOR, Donato de Mello. A vida e a obra de Vítor
Meireles: o julgamento crítico da época e a crítica
contemporânea. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Museu Nacional
de Belas Artes, 1982.
5.
FRANZ, Teresinha S. Educação para a compreensão
da arte: Museu Victor Meirelles. Florianópolis: Insular,
2001.
6.
PISANI, Osmar. Textos de teatro. Florianópolis: Fundação
Aníbal Nunes Pires, 2002.
7.
PROENÇA, Graça. História da arte. Rio de
Janeiro: Ática, 1989.
8.
Victor Meirelles no Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. Rio de Janeiro:
MNBA, 1970.
