The PEOPLE LANDSCAPES exhibition. NARRATIVES OF THE MNAC COLLECTION (1855-1920) deals with the aesthetics of the landscape, in dialogue with the presence and human intervention in nature. The young students of the Academies of Fine Arts, in the 1850s, took nature and truth in art as a model and recorded, in their artistic notes, the discovery of the country, its customs and traditions.
At the end of the 19th century, the novelty consisted of recording atmospheric values, with Silva Porto and Marques de Oliveira, through a new concept of landscape representation, understood by Ramalho Ortigão, in 1883, as a “naturalistic formula of modern art”. Especially endowed with light effects, to which feelings of nostalgia and dramatic expressions would always be linked, the artistic manifestations of this new trend coexist with the notion of idealized landscape that is diluted, at the turn of the 19th century, in fanciful and dreamed images.
A new approach to the collection, based on the representation of the landscape, allows for the awakening of new perspectives, between verism and symbolism, revealing the human presence on the paths, in the re-encounter of happiness through nature and in the scenic drama of feeling.
Maria de Aires Silveira
