The Alverca Palace (Casa do Alentejo) shelters a world of dreams within its structural and decorative composition. Numerous national artists contributed to this; amongst them Jorge Colaço, ‘The Master’, as he was known at the time. To him we owe the magnificent azulejo (tile) panels of this palace, just as it is to him that the resurgence of the art of ‘azulejo’ at the beginning of the 20th Century is due.
Son of a diplomat, Jorge Colaço was born in Tangier. From an early age he displayed an exceptional talent for drawing and caricature. During his youth he studied painting in Paris and Madrid.
His activity as a painter of azulejo was the result of his friendship with the Englishman, Gilman, then director of the Sacavém tile-factory; for it was here that Colaço would learn the techniques necessary to the art of azulejo.
From 1920 to 1940, ‘The Master’ was associated with another important tile-factory, (The Lusitania), where he became the director.
Colaço’s work is renowned throughout the world; apart from the panels at the Alverca Palace, other remarkable works by this artist include:
Hotel de Bucaço; his immense panel depicting the battle of Bucaço and the Portuguese conquests in Africa and India.
Sala dos Paços Pedidos; in the old Faculty of Medicine in Lisbon.
The huge São Bento railway station in Porto; as well as railway stations in Évora, Castelo de Vide, Marvão, to name but a few.
(And abroad)
England; Windsor Castle.
Switzerland; the old Palace of the United Nations in Geneva.
The USA, Spain, Belgium, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Uruguay are amongst the other countries where the works of Colaço are to be found.
There are three decorative panels by this artist in the Alverca Palace:
Fair of Santa Eulália, (in the Dining Hall).
‘The Lusíads’, (Sala de Olivença).
Hunting Scenes, ‘A Bull-chase’, (Sala dos Sócios).
Dating from 1918 to 1919, a period when Colaço was probably attached to the tile-factory at Sacavém, these panels well reflect the state of azulejo in the first half of the 20th century. Actually, at this time, there existed two opposing streams within the medium: on the one hand there were the modern examples expressed in Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and on the other hand, as is the case with the works that we are now considering, were the ‘traditionalists’ with their romantic or renaissance styles. Colaço’s inspiration stemmed from the historic grandeur of Portugal or just simply the celebration of daily life; a style which became exemplified by his fight against industrialisation.
Nostalgia for the rural life, the imagination of the medieval world, and historical inspiration were the weapons employed by the artists of this current. Whether by coincidence or not, we find examples of all three in this palace. As in:
Fair of Santa Eulália (rural life),
The Lusíads (historical),
Hunting Scenes, ‘A Bull-chase’ (medieval imagination).
The technique chosen by ‘The Master’ for the perfecting of these azulejos was the result of many years of experimentation. With the aid of Gilman, (the director of the Sacavém tile-factory), Colaço had mastered a very difficult technique. Drawing upon his skills in drawing, painting, and water-colouring, he employed them all in his work.
He opted for tinting on ‘fired’ glass which could be made with two different sorts of paint:
high-temperature colours (about 1000ºC)
low-temperature colours (600 to 700ºC).
The former provides a palette reduced in tones (the technique used for ‘The Lusíads’) while the latter enables a vast range of colours (the technique employed on the other panels).
Jorge Colaço only concerned himself with the figurative part of the panels; the painting of the ornamentation being left to his ‘team’. These projects were first water-colours, which once cut into little squares, were tranferred to the azulejos which he painted with successive layers of a mixture of paint with varnish and turpentine to obtain the necessary tones. This innovative technique was not only a discovery but became an established method for Portuguese azulejo.
Thus, we find in the Alverca Palace one of the great names in Portuguese azulejo, which remains in the history of the national arts as the man who revitalised this so typically lusitanian art.
