Amélia: queen, painter, patron
In the introduction to his book, José Alberto Ribeiro, director of the Ajuda National Palace and its associated Royal Treasury Museum, leaves no room for doubt about the purpose of his work: "Queen Amélia is certainly the monarch who has aroused the most interest in recent years, with works published in Portugal and France, but never in her role as a patron of heritage conservation and restoration or as a painter." He also states: "The artist is also less well-known as a painter who appreciated 'natural landscape' drawing and the historical heritage she collected in drawings and watercolors, organizing a veritable paper museum through the collection and classification of art and architecture objects, essentially medieval" (p. 9). On p. 72 we see a photograph of D. Amélia drawing in the archaeological excavations of Pompeii, on the famous 1903 trip across the Mediterranean for the instruction of the princes—apparently the only record of many similar occasions spent in Portugal, during which she produced an expressive pictorial oeuvre, consisting of 383 works, including drawings, watercolors, oils and mixed media.
Ten years after participating in the traveling exhibition and book “Tirée par ...”. Queen D. Amélia and photography , with Luís Pavão and others (Documenta, 2016, 180 pp.), Ribeiro continues in the dignified task of better understanding D. Amélia de Orléans (1865-1951), Portuguese queen since 1889, by publishing this book, which is a summary of her doctoral thesis in Art History, defended in 2024 at the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon, and which brought to the public much unpublished documentation. The indisputable “unconditional love for Portugal and the Portuguese people” (said by the queen, quoted on p. 11) is fully confirmed in this work, giving encouragement and balm especially to those who believe that the Monarchy is — to quote a great statesman — the worst of regimes, with the exception of all others… Reading for any time, Queen D. Amélia, painter and patron of historical heritage, offers us, in the country’s current political context, an opportunity to evaluate contrasts, which she certainly did not seek but is indeed there, available to those who see and think.
The daughter of the Count of Paris was born in Twickenham, on the outskirts of London, in the middle of a century particularly marked by artistic revivalism and care for heritage, with the appreciation of works of art and ancient monuments and the restoration of great palaces. Egyptomania was so in vogue that the Luxor Obelisk—an offering to King Louis-Philippe—was erected on Place de la Concorde in Paris 29 years before Amélie's birth. Her early years coincided with the renovation and restoration of the Château d'Eu in Normandy, one of the Orléans' principal residences in France, carried out by none other than Viollet-le-Duc between 1874 and 1879. Furthermore, "part of her childhood and adolescence was spent with her grandparents, the Dukes of Montpensier, in the palaces of Sanlúcar de Barameda and San Telmo in Seville, Andalusia, filled with works of art and in an area steeped in traditions that she always appreciated and enjoyed visiting" (p. 22). In Paris, the Orléans used part of the Matignon Palace, currently the official residence of the French Prime Minister. The consequence of this was that, “from an early age, this princess with a strong artistic background and awareness of the heritage value of works of art, showed an interest in the arts and in raising awareness and protecting Portuguese historical heritage, from archaeology to the restoration of cathedrals” (p. 23).
There was much to be done, or even almost everything to be done. Despite the contributions of Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano (one of his "chosen writers," p. 130) on Gothic in Portugal, which José Alberto Ribeiro explores, there was a dramatic lack of a history of national art that would underpin restoration campaigns, which were, moreover, so necessary, particularly since the long-ago abolition of religious orders in 1834. In this area, the memory of the nation founded on October 5, 1143, was clearly indebted to the work of visiting foreigners—and in some ways would continue to be so, if we consider the North American Robert Smith (1912-75) and his essential studies on our architecture. Still, the author states, “with the Portuguese constitutional monarchy, initiated by D. Maria II and her consort, D. Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, education in collecting, antiquarianism and the arts would be a constant, creating in future generations of Braganças great cultural interests and a varied artistic practice that would continue until 1910. We can even establish some parallels between the work of Ferdinand Philip of Orléans and D. Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg-Gotha” (p. 46), which is why it is “within this royal family, so linked to art and collecting, that D. Amélia enters by marriage with the crown prince, D. Carlos” (p. 47), himself “one of the most virtuoso painters of his time” (p. 77).
José Alberto Ribeiro was therefore able to easily list some of the Queen's interventions in the protection of the arts, artists and traditional crafts, which ran alongside her social philanthropy in the areas of health, education and, in particular, the protection of children — without, however, for once, combining or aligning them with her husband's extensive oceanographic and ornithological work, also focused on heritage, which would result in the Lisbon Oceanarium (furiously dilapidated, it should be noted, at the end of 1910...) and the three Birds of Portugal albums with 301 prints by Enrique Casanova, directed by D. Carlos. The Queen's personal involvement in the conservation of national monuments is most evident in the long medievalist restoration campaign of the Old Cathedral of Coimbra, beginning in 1893—which she followed closely and supported financially (and also designed)—but the generous royal hand also extended to support archaeological excavations in the Roman town of Conímbriga in 1899, whose progress concerned her, and the restoration of the Lisbon Cathedral, which began in 1902 and whose work she visited several times. She protested in vain against the gas factory built near the Belém Tower ("a sacrilegious neighborhood," she told a magazine in 1897): "I wrote, I begged, I pleaded with the Ministers of Public Works. I got angry, I exhausted my influence, I bothered everyone, and nothing!" she would say to José Leitão de Barros in a famous interview in 1938 (cited p. 66).
D. Amélia is responsible for the Royal Coach Museum, in the former Royal Riding School of the Belém Palace, to house “a collection that she knew to be unique in the European context” (p. 69), a very personal decision taken in 1902 and which demonstrates “a clear concern to inventory and preserve a unique collection at risk of being lost to collective enjoyment” (p. 68). In less than three years, he managed to inaugurate the museum, which opened on May 23, 1905, bringing together “everything that was the prerogative of the royal stables and that was still salvageable” (p. 71), at the same time that the Quinta de Belém was remodeled to serve as the official residence for visiting heads of state, starting in September 1908. In a footnote, Ribeiro did not miss the opportunity to note with melancholic irony that “Without knowing it, D. Amélia was preparing with dignity the official residence of the future president of the Republic,” a few months later… And although the visit to Egypt with his children in 1903 is not a direct theme of his work, the author mentions it precisely to emphasize that the Queen, “aware of the lack of Portuguese historical awareness of artifacts from a pre-classical civilization as relevant as Egypt” (p. 74), brought to Portugal a batch of 453 Egyptian antiquities. to be integrated into a national museum, a transfer that, in fact, he “closely followed”.
Chapters IV and V are titled "The Queen as Painter" and "The Years of Exile. Patronage, Collection, and Dispersal," opening doors to two worlds, the private and the public, in which the royal status is never absent, even if the role is. The artistic training begun early in Lisbon continued with the improvement of drawing and watercolor with Enrique Casanova (1850-1913), and João Alberto Ribeiro tells us that "the artistic work that the queen developed was not a mere dilettante exercise suited to her social position" (p. 84). Most of the drawings, with great detail, are primarily of churches and museums, which indicates her patrimonialist drive. The King and Queen inaugurated the São Roque Museum in January 1905, but the truth is that "the queen had a particular fondness for the collection of the São Roque church and had been drawing it since 1898" (p. 97). He drew profusely in Alcobaça in 1892. Note, for example, the drawings of Queen Leonor's holy font (p. 94) and the tomb of Queen Inês (p. 101)—or the beautiful watercolor, dated 1897, of the necklace that belonged to Queen Saint Isabel, in the Coimbra Museum (p. 91). Keeping pace with a contemporary wave of scientific studies, he also devoted attention to ethnographic motifs. Drawings were made in Vila Viçosa, and he once asked a beautiful young woman who worked at the São Pedro do Sul thermal spa to come to the palace "dressed as a peasant woman with a hood to draw her" (pp. 95, 96). He participated in exhibitions with philanthropic and related purposes, and the 31 drawings he made of the Sintra Palace would end up in a book by the Viscount of Sabugosa intended to fund the National Assistance for Tuberculosis Patients in 1903.
In the summer of 1910, he was preparing an album containing 130 archaeological drawings—a "portable museum," in the aptly named expression—in his own words, rescuing "vestiges of our ancient opulence, which escaped the ravages of time, the vandalism and greed of men" (cited on p. 113). Two of these works were most likely the "Custódia dos Jerónimos," a watercolor of the monstrance carved by Gil Vicente in 1506, known as the "Custódia dos Jerónimos," and the "Reliquary of Vasco da Gama," works from 1910 that can be seen on pp. 124 and 125. The republican coup and her exile would postpone the publishing project Mes Dessins, which eventually came to fruition in 1926 and 1928, with two large, small-print books published in Paris and London, respectively, at her own expense. The first was titled Mes Endroits Préférés , and the second , Art et Archéologie , a compilation of drawings and watercolors from the nineteen years she was queen of Portugal. Medieval architecture and sacred art, as well as floral motifs, make up more than half of the artistic themes represented. It is truly remarkable—but not surprising—that "the proceeds from the sale would once again benefit the National Assistance to Tuberculosis Patients in Portugal, a work she would never forget" (p. 153).
Behind her was D. Amélia's art collection, which can be seen in photographs of her studio and study at the Palácio das Necessidades published in periodicals of the time, and which José Alberto Ribeiro lists in detail to establish aesthetic guidelines for her, which are those of the "melancholic taste of her contemporary painters", predicting the end of an era and the "fast track to the Abyss" (sic) that 1910 and 1914-18 would confirm beyond measure, and 1939-45 would further reinforce. In the 41 years that D. Amélia lived after leaving Portugal in exile, her donations of works of art to museums and her constant acts of philanthropy leave no doubt about the character and purpose of this beautiful Frenchwoman who, in June 1939, offering our country her portrait by Victor Corcos (1905), wrote: "I wanted to give to the Portuguese Nation, which I love so much, and of whom I had the honor of being queen, this testimony of my great tenderness and my constant longing, hoping that the Portuguese people will always remember me with the same affection that I dedicate to them" (cited on p. 155). With this book, José Alberto Ribeiro and the publisher Caleidoscópio have repaid her—in the best way possible—so that it may be.
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