Artworks
A Mulher da Laranja [The Orange's Woman]
painting
Date
c. 1913
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
84,5 x 100 cm
In 1905, Eduardo Viana interrupted his painting degree at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts and left that year for Paris, where he continued his artistic studies. Until the outbreak of the Great War, he travelled through various European countries. The painter received several influences from those travels, being interested either in the values inherited from the 19th century either in the announcement of the modern rupture, which he would explore more intensively in the following years.
Although not dated, this painting, also called "Pomo d'Oiro", was exhibited for the first time in 1913, at the LSFA. The work is also referred to under this name in O Jornal of 13 April 1915. Marked by a figuration concentrated on his preferred themes - the landscape, the human figure, still life -, this painting is structured on Cezannian influences, also not being stranger to a naturalist form connected to the work of the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga.
The composition is worked on in different planes, which integrate three classic genres of Western painting: in the foreground, on the left, a still life consisting of a clay jar and a group of oranges; also in the foreground, more to the centre, the female character - probably a salesgirl - that alludes to the pictorial genre of the portrait; in the last plane, the landscape, consisting of the houses that allow a glimpse of the horizon line. The mysterious male figure with the cigarette and the other characters bring the urban space to life. Despite the several layers of information, the observer's gaze is drawn by the visual presence of the orange placed in the centre of the composition, and by the woman's face, which directly confronts us.
The composition is characterised by unity, given by the chromatic treatment in which brown and olive-green tones predominate, enhanced by the bright orange colour that sprinkles the whole composition, and by the artificial light of the distant sky.
JB
Although not dated, this painting, also called "Pomo d'Oiro", was exhibited for the first time in 1913, at the LSFA. The work is also referred to under this name in O Jornal of 13 April 1915. Marked by a figuration concentrated on his preferred themes - the landscape, the human figure, still life -, this painting is structured on Cezannian influences, also not being stranger to a naturalist form connected to the work of the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga.
The composition is worked on in different planes, which integrate three classic genres of Western painting: in the foreground, on the left, a still life consisting of a clay jar and a group of oranges; also in the foreground, more to the centre, the female character - probably a salesgirl - that alludes to the pictorial genre of the portrait; in the last plane, the landscape, consisting of the houses that allow a glimpse of the horizon line. The mysterious male figure with the cigarette and the other characters bring the urban space to life. Despite the several layers of information, the observer's gaze is drawn by the visual presence of the orange placed in the centre of the composition, and by the woman's face, which directly confronts us.
The composition is characterised by unity, given by the chromatic treatment in which brown and olive-green tones predominate, enhanced by the bright orange colour that sprinkles the whole composition, and by the artificial light of the distant sky.
JB
