Tribute to FAUSTO SAMPAIO

Fausto Sampaio was born in Alféolas, Anadia, in 1893. The hearing impairment that struck him at just 22 months of age made him deaf-mute but that didn’t stop him from having a great sensitivity for expressing himself through painting.

His artistic career reached its peak in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when he painted most of his works in the portuguese colonies and which earned him the title of Painter of the Empire. In some of those territory he was only passing through, but in Macao and S. Tomé he stayed longer and became a resident.

River Vouga at Well of S. Tiago, 1946 Fausto Sampaio (1893 - 1956) Oil on pressed cardboard 470 x 610 Inv. N. 0015

Fausto Sampaio distinguished himself as a great landscape painter. He expressed deep feelings for nature and excelled in the refined use of colour and the predominance of dull or luminous atmospheres. He was unsurpassed in the representation of the lands of Vale do Vouga.

The Haystacks of Costa Nova, 1942 Fausto Sampaio (1893 – 1956) Oil on wood 360 x 245 Inv. N. 0458

This composition manifests through subtle crusts, passages of tonalities of difficult execution, of a richness in polychrome, a result of incredible sensitivity, of great mastery and experience where decorativism assumes the Portuguese colours and specifically in this work the beach of Costa Nova, executed in 1942, oil on wood. This beach has a very strong connection to the artist’s hometown, Anadia, and to the whole Bairrada region as a summer resort.

View from Diu Fort, 1944 Fausto Sampaio (1893 – 1956) Oil on canvas 460 x 600 Inv. N. 0014

Fausto Sampaio was the Painter of the Empire, painting all the former Portuguese colonies, demonstrating that the national presence was notorious in those distant places, establishing a cultural connection between Portugal and the former colonies in a nationalist language, using Naturalism as the artistic current that, at the time, mirrored the Homeland. A West-East dialogue with the colours of a Globality of centuries.

Goa, 1944 Fausto Sampaio (1893 – 1956) Oil on canvas 456 x 604 Inv. N. 0341

Fausto Sampaio was a singular artist of the naturalist period of transition to modernism. Gifted with great technical mastery and enormous sensitivity, he was a versatile impressionist and an excellent landscape artist, with unique works in which the rapid brushstroke and extreme ease of handling the spatula allowed him to capture the impression of moments, almost palpable instants, making them last forever.

A disciple of Jules Renard, he stood out for his refined use of colour and the predominance of dull or luminous atmospheres.

Lourenço Marques, 1944 Fausto Sampaio (1893 – 1956) Oil on canvas 460 x 600 Inv. N. 0016

A singular artist of the naturalist period, in the transition to modernism, his work reveals his knowledge and admiration for the East, which also led him to adhere to the Orientalism characteristic of the painting of his time. His works, which are the result of his experiences in the lands he travelled through, such as Goa, Diu, Damão or Timor, but also those in which he lived, such as Macao, express the atmosphere, the contrasts, the landscape, the light, the figures and the shapes of each one.

Fundação Dionísio Pinheiro e Alice Cardoso Pinheiro

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