João Marques de Oliveira (Oporto, 1853 – Oporto, 1927) started the course of Historical Painting at the Oporto Academy of Fine Arts, in 1864. He finished in 1873, and in the same year he went to Paris with his faculty colleague Silva Porto, with a Government scholarship. In Paris, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was a student of Cabanel and Ivon, he contacted with the proposals of the Barbizon school and saw Corot’s retrospective exhibition, an artist he admired and who would have a great influence in his work. In 1876, always with Silva Porto, he went on various study visits to Belgium, Holland and England, settling in Rome at the end of the same year. Back in Paris, in 1878, the composition on Céfalo and Prócris, would mark the conclusion of the scholarship and the end of the stay abroad. In Portugal, the following year, he was nominated Merit Academician of the Oporto Academy of Fine Arts. In this same Academy, he taught, in 1881, Historical Drawing and from 1895, Historical Painting, and he was the Academy Director for some time. As a teacher, he had an essential role in the dissemination of the naturalist aesthetics in Portugal, particularly the ideas he assimilated in France. In 1880, he collaborated in the creation of the Oporto Artistic Centre and of its nucleus, The Portuguese Art, and he participated in the organisation of the Art Exhibitions of Ateneu Comercial do Porto, which took place between 1887 and 1895. Besides numerous portraits, such as the Silva Porto Portrait (1876), he left an extensive and remarkable work of landscape painting, essentially portraying the North of Portugal and demonstrating a unique sensitivity for nature.
FMV, July 2020
