User:Remuslupin1513/Josefa Garcia Greno

Content in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at Josefa Garcia Greno; see its history for attribution

Josefa Garcia Greno
Portrait of Josefa Garcia Greno by Adolfo Greno (1887)
Born	September 1st, 1850 Medina Sidonia
Died	January 27, 1902 Lisbon
Resting place	Alto de São João cemetery
Citizenship	Portuguese
Occupation	painter

 

Maria Josefa Garcia Seone Greno (Medina-Sidonia, September 1st, 1850 - Lisbon, January 27th, 1902), also known as Josefa Garcia Greno, was a luso-spanish naturalist who was parte of the Grupo do Leão.

Biography

Josefa Garcia Greno was born in Andaluzia, in the county of Medina-Sidonia, Santa Maria neighborhood, September 1st 1850. When her father, the captain-general José Garcia Saéz, died when she was four, Josefa and her mother, Maria Seone, moved to Coruña. Mother and daughter lived in Galicia for six years until they decided to move back to Andaluzia, where they lived in Seville, having been there that Josefa learnt how to read, write, embroider and drawing in one of the best spanish schools. She even published some tales and poems. The comeback was at the time of the fall of the First Spanish Republic and the restablishment of the monarchy with Afonso XII - the instability reigned in Spain, the republican regime would last only eleven months, a time period in which the country faced three civil wars. Maybe fearing the insecurity, they chose to settle in Lisbon, because of the Third Carlist War . In the portuguese capital, Josefa resorted to the high fashion and the embroidery as a livelihood for herself and her mother. Around 1870, she met her future husband, the painter Adolfo César de Medeiros Greno, who studied at the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts.

In September 18th, 1876, with 26 years of age, she marries Adolfo Greno, at the church of Nossa Senhora do Socorro, Lisbon. In the same year, she moves with her mother to Paris, so that Adolfo can study with Miguel Ângelo Lupi, and where she suits as model for his paintings. Adolfo would benefit the scholarship of Historic Painting he had won, starting to have has master, Alexandre Cabanel, follower of the greco-roman classic models. However he starts neglecting his studies and the work, attending more and more to the bohemian night of the city and stoping to turn in the works at time. This behaviour made him lose his scholarship in 1881. Josefa understood that her family couldn't depend on her husband, so she decided to learn how to paint.

Josefa was admitted at the Société des Artistes Français thanks to the landscape picture she presented. At this time, she socialized with painters like Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro e Artur Loureiro and saw her work being recognized. It is from this period the painting Um Concerto de Amadores painted by Columbano, in which the Greno couple appears by suggestion of Loureiro.Josefa is the feminine figure next to the pianist, looking down.

She dedicated herself especifically to the painting of flowers, like mimosas , peonies , marygolds and others. In 1884, participated on the XII Exhibition the Promoting Fine Arts Society, where she drew attention from the organizers because of her technique, specially because of the colors that she used and the way she worked the light in her canvas. She was awarded with a medal and becomes a sales success, superior than José Malhoa.

She goes back to Portugal in 1886 and in that same year presented pictures at the VI Exhibition of Modern Paintings, organized by the Grupo de Leão ("Lion group"), in which she was invited to by Silva Porto. She became one of the Senhoras Leoas ("Lioness Ladies"), name by which are known the women artists who were members of the group. Like Berta Ortigão, Maria Augusta de Prostes Bordalo Pinheiro e Helena Gomes. Josefa became an acclaimed painter, who did not lack orders and her paintings sold fast.

She taught painting and between her disciples were the naturalist painter Simão Luís da Veiga and the painter Júlia Hermínia da Conceição Xavier. Until 1901, is a constant presence at the exhibitions organized by the Grémio Artístico and by the Society of Fine Arts, having frequented the salons of the Lisbon cultural elite of the time, socializing with writers like Fialho de Almeida, exposing next to artist like Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, José Malhoa, Silva Porto, Fanny Munró, and others.

While Josefa obtained an high profissional success, her husband did the opposite, spending the family savings. Both their close friends and acquaintances considered that Josefa's biggest nervous breakdown happened in 1895, when her husband undully appropriated the savings that she had hardly earned.In 1897, the critics started listening what was said about her family's decay, and so she didn't participate in the Grémio Artístico of 1899, same year her mother died, affecting the artist deeply. Maria Seone was more than eighty. Josefa never painted again.

In the night of April 7th 1901, Josefa shot her husband, but failed to hit him. The event did not affect Adolfo, because this sort of intimidations was mutual and common between the couple. Josefa joined the first exhibition of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (National Society of Fines Arts), which inaugurated May 15th, 1901 and did not receive any medals. After years of torment, in the night of June 25th to 26th of the same year, Josefa Grcia Greno shot her husband with four shots, creating her last still life. The occurence was titled as "o horrível crime da Travessa de São Mamede"(the terrible crime of the Saint Mamede street) or as "caso Greno" (Greno case). The paintings exposed at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes were all acquired after the fatal day of June 26th. She would have said: "For him I sacrificed myself and became a painter...I worked a lot...until the last painting, that was this one", "He stole my joy and confidence, everything a woman can have of more sacred. My life was impossible with that liar... I suffered a lot. I suffer a lot!(...) He spent all the money I earned. He was unbalanced. We couldn't live well. The woman has her rights." She was taken to Aljube Prison and in the list of testimonials, her brother in law testified in her favor.

She was transfered to the Rilhafoles Hospital June 2nd, 1901 and Miguel Bombarda, an acclaimed psychiatrist and director of that hospital, forbidden her visits, so no one saw Josefa with life ever again. Her case was studued por Bombarda who said it was a case of delirium. The psychiatrist collected different oppinios of celebrated foreign psychiatrists, like Cesare Lombroso, Emil Kraepelin and Eduard Hitzig. Finishing the medical examiner process, Josefa was declared insane fo the majority of the newspapers, and her image was cruelly denigrated by Maximiliano Lemos in is entry to the Enciclopédia Ilustrada (Illustrated Encyclopedia), later deleted in the Grande Enciclopédia portuguesa e brasileira (Great Portuguese and Brasilian Encyclopedia). Little time after, she is diagnosed with the Bright's disease, adding to the mental decay. Seven months after being hospitalized, Josefa Garcia Greno died at 9pm, Janauary 27th of 1902, she 51 years old. On the next day an autopsy was made by Dr. Miguel Lombarda, that later, on February 1st, under his presidence, realized a session in the Sociedade de Ciências Médicas (Medical Sciences Society), being himslef the main speaker about the painter's case. In the same session, Silva Amado, notes that analyising Josefa's autopsy they noticed she had an heart with more than double in weight and size of a regular feminine heart.

On January 19th, it is published in Diário Ilustrado, the following article about her death: "(...) died in the Rilhafolles Hospital Mrs. Josefa Greno. Here is the last part of that drama that so strongly impressed us. The death, downing on her, left still a terrible interrogation: Some will answer her with the word crime, some, more pious, and so maybe more wise, with the word disgrace; others eve will see in that interrogation the most perfect answer... Being, so, whatever. What is right is that that disturbed woman's heart must have found itself alredy in face with the Truth: and I hope, that with i'ts light, it has found in itself, not blood, but only tears".

The funeral procession, on January 30th, that followed to the Alto de São João cemetery, the same where lies Adolfo, summed up to a golden carriage for the coffin, another one for the priest and acolyte and five other carriages with "other ladys and three gentlemen".

Works of art

• Still life with roses and pansies
• Flowers (a circular roses' bouquet)
• Dove among Flowers
• Peonies

Prizes and exhibitions

1884 - Debuts in Portugal in the XIII exhibition organized by the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes, where besides being the one that sold more paintings, wins the third class medal of the Exhibition, passing ahead the painter Maria Augusta de Prostes Bordalo Pinheiro.

1886 - Exhibits in the VI Exhibition of Modern Paintings (Grupo Leão)

1887 - Participates in the show of teh Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes and in the VII Exhibition of Modern Paontings of the Grupo Leão.

1888- Joins the Exposição Industrial Portuguesa

1889 - Exhibits in the eight salon of the Grupo do Leão

1891 - Join the I Exhibition of the Grémio Artístico in Lisbon

1891 - Exhibition of the Portuguese Industry, that elapsed in the Palácio de Cristal, in Porto

1892 - Exhibits in the II Esposição do Grémio Artístico- Sociedade Nacional das Belas Artes and wins an honorable mension in the Oil Section.

1893 - Joins the III Exposição do Grémio Artístico de Lisboa

1894 -  Joins the IV Exposição do Grémio Artístico de Lisboa

1895- Exhibit of 1885, Josefa exhibits besides Malhoa, Roque Gameiro, Arthur Melo and the king himself, Dom Carlos I

1901- Exhibits 5 paintings in the I Exhinit of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes in the oil paintings section.

Ligações Externas

Programa de rádio: No tempo das Dálias (Antena 2)

[[Category:1902 deaths]] [[Category:1850 births]] [[Category:19th-century Portuguese painters]] [[Category:Portuguese women painters]] [[Category:Portuguese painters]] [[Category:Women painters]] [[Category:Paintings in Portugal]]