Antonio Teixeira Carneiro was a Portuguese painter, who also produced illustrations, wrote poems and gave art lessons. As to the painting activity, Carneiro represented Expressionism.
Background
Antonio Teixeira Carneiro was born on September 16, 1872, in Amarante, the part of the Kingdom of Portugal (currently Portugal) to a working-class family. His father was a merchant.
When Antonio was a seven-year-old child, his father left the family. Soon, his mother died. The boy was sent to the orphanage under the Santa Casa da Misericórdia. Carneiro had stayed there for eleven years.
Education
Antonio Teixeira Carneiro obtained his formal education and first drawing lessons at the orphanage in Porto directed by the Santa Casa da Misericórdia.
In 1884, Carneiro was sent to the Academy of Fine Arts of Porto in order to pursue his artistic training. He had studied there for twelve years. Carneiro had been taught by João Marques de Oliveira for four years.
Then, at eighteen, the painter left the orphanage and became a pupil of António Soares dos Reis who gave him lessons on sculpture. After his teacher’s suicide, Antonio Teixeira Carneiro came back to painting by enrolling at the studio of João António Correia.
After graduation in 1896, Carneiro obtained a scholarship which allowed him to pursue his education at the Julian Academy in Paris. Among his teachers at the institution were Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. While in the capital of France, the artist also taught himself by exploring the art of symbolism which was widespread this time.
The start of Antonio Teixeira Carneiro’s career can be counted from the Parish Exposition Universelle of 1900 where he presented his triptych called Life which brought the painter his first success. The following year, Carneiro came back for a short time in Portugal where he exhibited the artworks of the Parish period in Porto and Lisbon.
After the two-year stint in his native country, the painter returned to the capital of France and started to earn his living by making commissioned portraits. The same year, he participated for the first time at the exhibition organized by the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA). In 1904, Carneiro sent his canvases to the United States where they were demonstrated in Saint Louis, Missouri. The same year, he held solo exhibitions in Lisbon and Porto.
His second participation at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts dated to 1906. In one year, the artist tried his hand as a decorator by working on the commission from the Stock Exchange Palace (Palácio da Bolsa) – Carneiro decorated its ceiling of the reading room. However, the artist didn’t drop his painting activity. So, the same year, he competed at the Barcelona International Exposition which provided the painter with one more award – a gold medal for one of his wife's portraits.
In 1911, the painter returned to his homeland and became a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Porto. Having some financial problems, Carneiro decided to try his fortune in Brazil where he went in 1914. He had stayed there for two years during which he presented his artworks in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In a couple of years after his return to Porto, he was named a chair of the figure drawing department of the Academy of Fine Arts of Porto.
Antonio Teixeira Carneiro combined his academic activity with the contribution to many periodicals, both as poet and painter, like Atlantida and Portuguese Earth. Despite, the painter produced illustrations for the works of various authors, such as António Correia de Oliveira and João de Deus. The illustrations for Divine Comedy by Dante which Carneiro started this period remained unfinished – only 42 sketches for Inferno were done.
Soon after the exhibition organized by the National Society of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 1922, the painter established the atelier at the Rua Joaquim António de Aguiar Street in Porto (currently António Carneiro Street). The building of the workshop was designed by Manuel Duarte Moreira de Sá e Melo and Álvaro Pinto de Miranda, the painter’s close friend.
At the end of his life, in 1929, he was named the director of the Academy of Fine Arts of Porto.
The last expositions in which Antonio Teixeira Carneiro presented his artworks while alive were organized in 1929 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Camões Reading Lusíadas to the Friars of Santo Domingo
Beach View with House and Boat
House of Póvoa de Varzim
View of the Harbor
Landscape
Portrait of an Old Man
Untitled
Moonlight
Marina Landscape
View of the beach with Boats
Landscape
Membership
Renascença Portuguesa
,
Portugal
Interests
Artists
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Albrecht Dürer
Connections
Antonio Teixeira Carneiro married Rosa Carneiro on December 23, 1893. The couple had lived together until the end of the painter’s life and had three children. Their first born was named Claudio Carneiro who became a musician. The middle child was a girl Maria Josefina and the eldest son, Carlos Carneiro who followed his father’s steps and chose the career of a painter.