Sessão do Conselho de Estado


Sessão do Conselho de Estado is an artwork of the genre historical painting made by Georgina de Albuquerque in 1922. It portrays the session of of the State Council of Brazil, preceding Brazilian independence. The artwork is part of the collection in exposition of the National Historical Museum of Brazil, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The painting is notable for two reasons. It's a work of Brazilian academic art done by a Brazilian woman, when at the time that type of painting was mainly made by men. It also shows a gender perspective of Brazilian independence, insofar as it highlights the participation of the then princess Maria Leopoldina in the political process of colonial rupture of 1822.
Albuquerque won the prize of the Exposition of Contemporary Art and Retrospective Art of the Independence Centenary, a competition held on the centenary of Brazilian independence. The goal of the competition was to select the paintings that best depict historical events linked to Brazilian independence. The prize was the buying of a painting by the federal government, to become part of the collection of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. The painting was donated by the school to the National Historical Museum.

Description

The painting by Georgina de Albuquerque was made with oil on canvas. Its measures are of height and of width. The predominant colours are orange, pink and yellow. It has been emphasised that in the painting, there is "life" and "movement". In the background, there is a direct light, coming from a window, possibly opening to a park; that light contributes to making the tonality of the painting "hot" and "pleasant". The brushstrokes are strong and ill-defined.
The central object in the painting is a table with a square top. It's a well-crafted object, with three sculpted legs and rounded feet. In addition to the table, there are chairs and a console table, over which there is a candelabrum and a clock showing 11 o'clock.
The focus of the painting is Maria Leopoldina, in a meeting with the Council of the Attorneys-general of the Provinces of Brazil, in the Paço Imperial, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. She is shown in profile, sitting on a chair with a flower motif, on the left corner. Her left arm is resting over the table, holding paper pages, and the other arm is on the chair armrest. The papers the princess holds are orders from the Portuguese Cortes to Dom Pedro, commanding him to return to Portugal. In the scene, the princess is portrayed as a political deal-maker :
Are present in the meeting José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, the Patriarch of the Independence, with whom Maria Leopoldina interacts, and Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada, sitting. With his hands on the table, at the side of the Patriarch of the Independence, is Joaquim Gonçalves Ledo. Behind Martim Francisco, is José Clemente Pereira. Behind José Bonifácio, are Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro, Manoel Antônio Farinha, Lucas José Obes and Luiz Pereira da Nóbrega. The councilmen are in uniform, with light-coloured pants and green dress coats. The meeting is held in the absence of Dom Pedro, who is in a trip to São Paulo.
Albuquerque's intention was to portray the moment when the princess, under the advice of José Bonifácio, prepares a letter to Dom Pedro, encouraging him to end Brasil's colonial status. It's in this famous letter that Maria Leopoldina writes: "The pome is ripe, harvest it now, or else it will rot". Dom Pedro received the letter in, the date of the "Cry of Independence".
The painting has the following caption, in direct reference to Rocha Pombo's analysis of independence:

Context

Georgina de Albuquerque painted Sessão do Conselho de Estado during a time of social conflict over women's suffrage. In 1922, Bertha Lutz and other suffragists organised the First Feminist Congress of Brazil and founded the Brazilian Federation for Women's Progress. That context has consequences for the production and interpretation of the artwork, and also in the artist's career.
Albuquerque's painting, even through maybe it wasn't the artist's intention, supported "the feminist struggle for recognition of women's right to vote and full citizenship , in portraying Leopoldina in the middle of political action, deciding the fate of the country ". On the other hand, academicist circles and the historical painting market were almost exclusive to male artists, and in those circumstances, Albuquerque's trajectory is marked by "perseverance" and a rupture with the prevailing belief that "submission and reservation" were the main characteristics of women. Because of that, it was considered a way to defy male predominance in the academicist genre.
The painting and exhibiting of the painting occurred when Albuquerque already had recognition for her artistic career. Her artworks had stood out in art exhibits held in the previous years of 1907, 1912, 1914 and 1919. In 1920, she participated in an academical jury for an artistic competition, being the first woman to participate in a jury of this type in Brazil. Therefore, in 1921, when she began production of Sessão do Conselho de Estado, the painter already had a stable professional situation and had achieved commercial success.
Georgina de Albuquerque had already done, in the first fifteen years of the 20th century, paintings about women. However, the presence of men is distinctive in Sessão do Conselho de Estado, among the painter's other works. The portrayal of the scene from 1822 was done based on research in the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes and the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute.
In 1922, when Albuquerque exhibited the painting for the same time, occurred the Modern Art Week. It's a period of change in the artistic canons, which influenced the painter. Therefore, the transition is also present in the painting, insofar as it combines modernism, an artistic movement on the rise at the time, and academicism, which was already in decline. Among the modernist vanguards, the impressionist American painter Mary Cassatt was an influence on the painting.

Style

From a stylistic point of view, the painting has been described as a "contained audacity". That because, in a way, it "clearly contradicts certain expectations that guide the common view on what a historical painting should be", like the triumphalism and male heroism; otherwise, it indicates an "academicisation of impressionism", as although the colours and the painting technique are not academicist, there are conventional historical painting elements in the work, specially the framing and the theme.
The oil painting over canvas congregates elements from two Brazilian artistic movements, modernism and academicism. Academicist characteristics of Sessão do Conselho de Estado are: historical theme, the type of classical framing of the characters in the scene, the size of the artwork, and a certain quest for faithfulness in the forms of the portrayed personalities. Also identified were impressionist influences, like the dilution of reality, in which, despite it being possible to recognise the figures, they aren't portrayed precisely.
The encounter of influences of distinct artistic movements in the work caused it to be defined as "a compromise solution between academicist theme and impressionist style, characterizing the 'discreet audacity' of its author - conservative in her language, audacious in her social subversion and genre aesthetics.
About Albuquerque's stylistic choice, the sociologist Ana Paula Cavalcanti Simioni wrote:

Public imagination on independence

Sessão do Conselho de Estado is a counterpoint to the academicist artwork Independence or Death , by Pedro Américo, the most well-known pictorial depiction of the end of Brazil's colonial status. In that painting, the proclamation of Independence is portrayed based on the heroization of Dom Pedro, with raised sword, in a triumphal scene. Albuquerque counters the depiction by Pedro Américo by: choosing a woman as central character, inverting the expected position between the characters, with the secondary characters above the protagonist, choosing a impressionist style, and working in the field of historical painting, normally exclusively male.
The sociologist Ana Paula Simioni analysed that:
The depiction of Independence in Albuquerque's work doesn't take on a warlike character, "a decision provoked by the impetus of indignation", but as a "result of a serene planning, from a political negotiation done by diplomats whose strength came from a strategizing intellect, and not from warrior physical strength". That contributes to a historiographic current that doesn't presents the end of colonial status as a rupture, but as a gradual national process, during which the State Council guaranteed cohesion and stability.

Outlook on Maria Leopoldina

Albuquerque's painting counters the artwork Retrato de Dona Leopoldina de Habsburgo e seus filhos , by Domenico Failutti, also made for the celebrations of the Brazilian Independence centenary. The artworks establish a "visual battle", in the way they differ in the depiction of the role of Maria Leopoldina.
On one hand, in her artwork, Albuquerque seemed to have echoed the feminist struggle by putting the princess in the role of historical subject, contradicting the dominant ideology that only domestic roles are fit for women. In a way, the painting "masculinises" the portrayed character. On another hand, Failutti depicted Maria Leopoldina as a stereotyped virtuous mother. That was actually a declared choice by the then director of the Museu do Ipiranga Afonso d'Escragnolle Taunay, when he commissioned the painting to Failutti. In this comparison, Sessão do Conselho de Estado defines a "new woman", contributing to modifying conventional views of genre relations.
The portrayal of the princess as protagonist of the Independence also contradicts the academicist convention of depicting women as allegories of the nation, violated by colonisation. An iconic example is the work of Victor Meirelles, who portrays Brazil as a dead nude indigenous woman in Moema. Maria Leopoldina, in Albuquerque's perspective, is not a victim or passive character, but an agent in the process of rupture with colonial status.

Reception

Sessão do Conselho de Estado was exhibited publicly in the Exposition of Contemporary Art and Retrospective Art of the Independence Centenary, that began in. The painting was selected in 1923, together with artworks by Augusto Bracet, Helios Seelinger and Pedro Paulo Bruno, to be bought by the public art collection, the main prize of this fine arts event with a goal of acquiring works that alluded to the national formation of Brazil. The selection was made by Flexa Ribeiro, Archimedes Memória and Rodolfo Chambelland, with their task being searching for new iconographic portrayals of historical interpretations of independence. Albuquerque's artwork was described afterwards as "the most important" of these new portrayals.
The artwork, particularly due to its size, lead Albuquerque to consolidate herself as a exponent in the academicist movement in Brazil, specially of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, of which she became director in 1952. Furthermore, she is considered exemplar for having consolidated herself as professional painter in a field that until then was fundamentally dominated by men.

Critical reception

In the magazine Ilustração Brasileira, the art critic Ercole Cremona celebrated Albuquerque's painting as a "beautiful artwork inspired by the concepts of Rocha Pombo", in which the painter "lent all of her great soul, all of her feeling and her marvellous technique to the painting, where there's moved and well drawn figures, resolved attitudes and palette resolved with great wisdom". In the Revista da Semana, it was said that the artwork was done in a "canvas of large size, inclined to modern tastes, joyful to the eyes due to the polychromy, pleasing to the spirit due to the subject".
In a note in O Jornal, it was recorded that "the princess' figure is shown magnificently, in the purity of her lines and in the nobility of her attitude". In contrast, José Bonifácio, standing up, apparently exposing the crisis between the Portuguese Crown and the colony to Maria Leopoldina, lacks prominence. It has been noted that in the painting, there's an historiographic error, considered "grave" : the uniform should have been blue, in the colour of this type of clothing during the first reign, and in the painting it's green, the Empire's colour.