Aurélia de Sousa, 'Laço Preto'/ Black Bow, self-portrait,1895
José Caiado de Souza Collection
Aurélia de Sousa born Maria Aurélia Martins de Souza on 13 June 1866, em Valparaiso, Chile. Portuguese-chilean painter, moved later to Porto, Portugal where she lived until her death.
She lived at Quinta da China an eighteenth century house on the banks of Douro River which wood become the setting and studio for her paintings.
Aurélia de Sousa photographed beyonf her self-portrait "Laço Negro"
photographer: Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, 1895
At the age of sixteen she began taking lessons with António da Costa Lima and painted her first self-portrait. In 1893 she began studies at the Fine-Arts Academy of Porto, where she was a pupil of João Marques de Oliveira, who greatly influenced her style.
In 1898, she moved to Paris to study painting at the Julian Academy, taking courses with Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. She held her first exhibition, then traveled in Europe in the next three years, before finally returning to Portugal in 1901, where she worked as an illustrator and participated regularly in Porto's art scene, exhibiting at the Sociedade de Belas-Artes do Porto, in the Galeria da Misericórdia, and annually in the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, in Lisbon.
Google Doodle Aurélia de Sousa 155th Birthday
💖Google Doodle:
Today’s Doodle celebrates the 155th birthday of Portuguese artist Aurélia de Souza, one of the few women whose work was exhibited in galleries alongside Portugal’s great 19th century painters. Infused with strokes of realist and impressionist influences, de Souza’s naturalist paintings served as windows into daily Portuguese life through landscapes of her journeys and her personal favorite genre: self- and family portraits.
On this day in 1866, Maria Aurélia de Souza was born to Portuguese immigrants in Valparaíso, Chile. Her family returned to their homeland after acquiring a farm along the Douro river near Porto, Portugal. It was on these idyllic banks that de Souza began to paint and draw at the age of 16. After only three years, she painted her first self-portrait—an art form that became her hallmark.
"De Souza’s paintings were regularly featured at her alma mater, just one of the many prestigious Portuguese galleries that championed her work. In addition to her lifelong work as a painter, de Souza also illustrated for Portuguese magazines and the 1913 short story entitled “Perfis Suaves” (“Smooth Profiles”). "
Google
Familiar scene/ Cena familiar
Aurélia de Sousa, 1911
The circumstances of being a woman at the turn of 20th century and within the society of Porto where she lived or Paris where she joined the Académie Julian at the age of 30 are key to understanding the Souza's work, the signifiance of which was recognized rather belatedly by Portuguese art historians.
In 1893, de Souza further refined her talent in the Portuguese tradition as a student of the Porto Academy of Fine Arts. De Souza moved to Paris in 1899, where she expanded her palette as an apprentice of several French masters.
Her painting was of a personal and naturalist style, at times with realism, impressionism and post-impressionism influences.
Her subjects included portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life. She is most famous for her "Self-Portrait", painted in 1900.
Souza enigmatic, androgynous and provocative self-portraits in which she depicts herself wearing a distinctive red coat or outsize black bow or disguised in St Anthony, are a historical example of a female artist asserting her identity as a creator.
"Aurélia de Sousa’s iconic self-portrait, painted in 1900, is the starting point for a reflection about a context of creation that, for centuries, was almost exclusively dominated by men."
Museum Gulbenkian, All i Want
Aurélia de Sousa, self-portrait, 1900
Museu Soares dos Reis, Porto, Portugal
After one year in her new home, she captured herself dressed wearing a red-coat in the oil painting “Self-Portrait,” a work widely regarded as her most famous. She continued to draw influence from the international arts in the years that followed, traveling across Europe before returning to Portugal in 1902.
A inclusão deste quadro na exposição Soleil et Ombres, l’Art Portugais du XIXème, que José-Augusto França organizou em Paris, em 1987, “é o início de um novo reconhecimento de Aurélia de Sousa, que a partir daí nunca mais parou”.
_by_Aur%C3%A9lia_de_Sousa_b.jpg)
At studio,1916
Aurélia de Sousa
In 2016, the exhibition Aurélia de Sousa: Mulher Artista Dividida celebrated 150 years of a great name in Portuguese art, the woman and artist Aurélia de Sousa, author of hundreds of paintings, many of them inaccessible to the public, and a huge collection of photographs, almost all of them still to be studied.
She photographed herself dressed as St Anthony, to depict this painting.
Her painting was of a personal and naturalist style, at times with Realism, Impressionism and post-impressionism influences. Her subjects included portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life. She is most famous for her "Self-Portrait", painted in 1900.
Interior com figura feminina
Aurélia de Sousa
In 1893, de Souza further refined her talent in the Portuguese tradition as a student of the Porto Academy of Fine Arts. De Souza moved to Paris in 1899, where she expanded her palette as an apprentice of several French masters. After one year in her new home, she captured herself dressed wearing a red-coat in the oil painting “Self-Portrait,” a work widely regarded as her most famous. She continued to draw influence from the international arts in the years that followed, traveling across Europe before returning to Portugal in 1902.
She died at her Quinta da China, Porto, on 26 May 1922, at fifty-five years old.
Portrait of a girl, 1910 (private collection)
Education:
As I always write, Arts are absolutely necessary to a complete and better education of children and young adolescents.
I was lucky studying Humanities and Arts. All my life has been so full of good moments as a teacher sharing my literary and artistic thoughts and actions on young people's education along the years
Discovering Arts in school education, some students can pick their inner path on Arts and later they will choose Art colleges and Higher Schools of Arts to develop their aptitude by a real leaning of Arts.
In our days, digital culture was so important and well-come into the the school curriculum as an important tool to tackle the world's toughest problems, as the pandemic times.
We have creating bridges between remote learning and in-person lessons. Different tools not only coexist but value each other for their contributions and potential on education.
Level: All levels.
- Focus on Arts (Vocational Education) ; School of Arts (Higher Education).
- Secondary education: cross-curricular Arts and other school subjects.
Curricula: Arts ; Literature ; Design ; Digital Arts.
Resources: English and Portuguese
Google Arts & Culture : Aurélia de Sousa
Museum Gulbenkian: All I Want
Universidade do Porto: Antigos Estudantes Ilustres: Aurélia de Sousa
Museu Gulbenkian: Tudo o que Eu Quero
"I would like to show the world today as an artist sees it and tomorrow as the moon sees it."
Hannah Höch, painter
G-Souto
13.06.2021
update 23.05.2026
Copyright © 2021G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®
Schools : Women in Art : Aurélia de Sousa, the Portuguese painter : Resources by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Sources: Google Arts & Culture/ Wikipedia/ Museu Calouste Gulbenkian
_by_Aur%C3%A9lia_de_Sousa_b.jpg){kind=link}
_-_Aur%C3%A9lia_de_Souza_(C%C3%A2mara_Municipal_do_Porto_-_Casa-Museu_Marta_Ortig%C3%A3o_Sampaio).png){kind=link}