Henrique Pousão

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Henrique César de Araújo Pousão (Vila Viçosa, 1 January 1859 - Vila Viçosa, 20 March 1884) was a Portuguese painter.

Model painting, oil on canvas, 1880

Cecilia, oil on canvas, 1882

The house of the blue shutters, 1883, oil on wood

[edit] Life

Henrique Pousão was the son of a judge, from a wealthy family of Alentejo. He soon revealed his high talent at the age of ten copying a portrait of Rubens. In 1872 he endorses in the Fine Arts Academy of Porto where until 1879, when he finishes his formal studies, he was awarded with excellent grades and prizes. Soon after his feeble wealth reveal tuberculosis from which he wood die some years later. Meanwhile he will travels to Paris, studying in the Fine Art Academy of Paris under Adolphe Yvon and Cabanel. Soon doctors advise him to change from Paris and go to Italy due to a warmer climate that would favour his weak condition. In 1882 he stablishes a studio in Rome in Via dei Portoghesi and after in Naples and Capri. There he would paint some of his major works. In 1884 he returns to Portugal willing to recover but, tragically, he would die soon leaving a default in Portuguese and European art development. However, his volume of work and legacy is amazing for an artist deceased so young.

[edit] Work

He belonged to the naturalist generation, like António Silva Porto and João Marques de Oliveira, however is not so academic netheir has a bigger proximity to Impressionism like the two mentioned. In his short life, he was the most innovative Portuguese painter of his generation and some of his works can be considered even ahead of his contemporary European painters. Pousão's originality lead to the myth that he was the only Portuguese impressionist painter, which he never was. While in Paris he seemed to have seen carefully Manet for the use of black equally as any other colour. Some of his landscape works, done in a more loose, expressive style are seen by some has a prelude to modern art and abstaction. This approach can be seen in paintings like Miragem (1882) (Mirage),Fachada de Porta Soterrada (1882) (Facade of whelmed door) in which plains of colour, textures and reflections are highly abstract. Some of his best works were painted in small wood panels often no bigger than 100mm x 160mm in a poetic, luminous style.

The best collection of his work is at the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto.