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Self portrait, oil on canvas, undated

Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon, 21 November 1857- Lisbon 6 November 1929), who is usually referred to as Columbano, was a Portuguese painter.

He was the son of a mediocre romantic painter, Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro, and the younger brother of the great caricaturist, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro.

Manuel Gustavo, oil on wood, 1884

The Lion Group, oil on canvas, 1885

He became the leading painter of his generation and the master of realism in Portuguese painting, specializing in portraiture. He was disciple of his father, Lupi and Simões de Almeida, Portuguese acquainted painters of the time. After attempting twice for a bursar to study abroad finally in 1881 the countess of Edla, second wife of D.Fernando would finace his study in France. There he studied the work of Manet, Degas and Courbet without losing his distinctive style which is often gloomy and intimist. He joined the "Grupo do Leão"(The Lion Group), a usual meeting of artists, writers and intellectual in a Lisbon downtown restaurant called "Leão de Ouro"(The Gold Lion) in order to discuss aesthetic issues and proclaim Naturalism against the academic art of the time. He painted portraits of some of the greatest names of Portuguese society and culture of his time like Teófilo Braga and had great phsichological accuracy in defining the personality of those depicted. His most famous portrait was that of the poet Antero de Quental in 1889. In this haunting work Columbano seems to have anticipated Antero's suicide.

After the Republic proclamation, in 1910, he designed the flag of the new regime and became director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in Lisbon. The best collection of his paintings is in the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon.

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