Decorative environments where all the arts harmonize, integrated in an almost oblivion. Some environments of Romanticism studied by us have arrived intact to this day. Unfortunately, others were victims of sharing between heirs and the unsustainable maintenance of large houses. We strongly emphasize the inevitable reform in the nineteenth century environments because the change of habits made essential new thematic compartments and multifaceted objects to decorate them.Respect for romantic environments was not what was expected, because the fleeting evolution of taste, coupled with the contingencies of consumer society, wiped out its authenticity. The fact of being revivalists took away their antiquity. Let us try to understand it through the romantic environments presented, because it is time to look better at this "new style" still considered of doubtful taste and whose inspiration came from the royal environments. In the north of Portugal, there are no shortage of houses with environments typical of this period. It is a pity that the value of history is not given to a Romanticism that remains alive.The eighteenth-century arts will seek influences at all times, recreating the most remote past, with the artistic and socio-cultural knowledge, and already industrialized time. We are interested in focusing on this learning that has changed the course of being, living and feeling in a journey back in time to the Middle Ages. Rethinking existence, withdrawing and accumulating previous knowledge, the nineteenth century evolved as the abstract of the arts and sciences with its own interpretation. We understand this not only in the context of being the great era of changes and inventions, but almost isolated, at the mercy of the special looks and feelings of each individual inserted in a determined family and social layer.The region can make the difference and not by chance we look at environments of noble houses of the North of Portugal. It seems obvious to us that the region above the river Douro, historically more closed and isolated in its private life – not forgetting the entire area of Douro and Beira Alta – has better preserved ancestral values and traditions within its noble families.By the speed of fashions, circulation of goods and families, adhesion to foreigners and foreigners, centralization of power, Lisbon ended up being penalized for intact eighteenth-century environments. The decoration of Ajuda National Palace is probably the only one of its kind, since even the decoration of Tuileries Palace was destroyed by the commune of Paris in 1871. Without forgetting the Palácio da Pena, considered in 2007 one of the wonders of Portugal, which attests to the current popularity of these environments.In civil houses, environments remain open to study, not distancing themselves from the behavior, taste and living of a society sensitive to the most varied type of artistic manifestations. The houses presented differ between rural and urban, and are mixed in some cases, as we confirm that "there is no urban family as there is no rural family". The noble houses of Guimarães have some highlight in our dissertation because, initially, we think about exclusive Vimaranenses environments. The abundance, originality and historical-artistic richness of these examples of the north Douro river have changed our course, which has spread to other localities.Our dissertation serves as a tribute to the romantic movement and of praise to those who respect its memory, continuing to love the environments of these houses, erected or only intervened in the Eighth, which we find described in the novels and opinions of notable writers such as António Augusto Teixeira de Vasconcellos, Camilo Castello Branco, Eça de Queiroz. It is they who perpetuate the ways, people, experiences, prejudices (and concepts), scents of times where the past was never lost.Starting from the general, and of a comprehensive characterization, we highlight six of the examples that seemed relevant to us in terms of romantic decorative environments in noble houses that could exert a relevant influence at the time. In a more specific and strict plan, we study environments of other houses, dispersed by the North of Portugal, to which we make reference.In addition to the interest of these estates, characteristic of the collection of noble and bourgeois noble families (some of which have already been dismantled), the description of goods – which transports us to the reality of the great houses of the Court Nobility, appealing to a nobility in since the second half of the 18th century. After searching for noble houses, we highlight both preserved and recently dismantled environments with shares. We consider the houses of Villar d` Allen and Visconde da Gândara (in Porto), Carmo, S. Cipriano and Sezim (in Guimarães) and Boavista (in Ponte da Barca), as examples to be highlighted.Villar d` Allen, although initially remodeled by John Allen, was his son, Alfredo Allen, 1st Viscount of Villar d' Allen, who transformed it into the living museum of curiosities linked to the family and naturalia, which remains. Of all those studied, Villar d' Allen is perhaps one of the most romantic in that it preserves all memories and interventions. In the neoclassical house, erected in Eastern Porto by the 1st Viscount of Gândara, already exhibited a central heating by means of boilers in an underground floor. Casa do Carmo, attached to the family of the counts of Margaride in Guimarães, and which received the last kings of Portugal, is stripped of its filling, which has been dispersed by the family. (Unfortunately, it has undergone recent works that have distorted its interiors.)In the same county, Nicola Bigaglia (1841-1908) was called to intervene in S. Cipriano after designing the house which is now known as Museum of Quinta de Santiago, in Leça da Palmeira. Primitive medievalism added decorative and architectural aesthetics already rooted in a mature romanticism that influenced the first decades of the twentieth century. We compare it to Quinta de Pindela, whose house was last restored and enlarged in 1885, operated by the 2nd Viscount of Pindella, personal friend of João Santiago (lord of S. Cipriano) and father of D. Júlia do Carmo, married with a son of the 1st Count of Margaride who remodeled the house to receive the Majesties. Also in Guimarães, we distinguish the possible contribution of the taste of Auguste Roquemont (1804-1852) in the wallpaper of the halls of the House of Sezim. This artist spent great stays in that locality, leaving his mark by several dwellings that he visited like friend and bastard son of a German prince.The ambiences of the Casa da Boavista, in Ponte da Barca, were conceived at the end of the 19th century by Bento Malheiro Pereira Pita de Vasconcelos, 4th Viscount of Carreira. It have an English taste, related to Villar d' Allen, and its characteristic is the abundant light coming from the wide openings that allow the conviviality with nature. The inspiration came from the Casa da Carreira, the family Távora of Viana do Castelo, now the seat of the Town Hall. The eighteenth-century works were carried out simultaneously, and the owners appealed to the same craftsmen.In this dissertation it is important to focus on the decorative arts in the private domain that circulated from the interiors to the exteriors with some elements that remained from time to time in the Middle Ages. They were produced in nineteenth-century in Portugal and, even earlier in Europe, because our national reality is always a late reflection of European trends. Although, at this time, there were many cases in which the fashion dictated in Paris was soon followed in Portugal.Exposing well, in the aesthetic sense and in the will to retain the gaze, was not significant. Exposing a lot became an ideal – as in Villar d` Allen, where became a small museum of intimate pieces and living memories, in honor of John Allen. In the gardens, we find houses of “fresco” that fit into the landscape architecture of forms sometimes geometric or presumably spontaneous. We highlight the 17th century labyrinthine gardens of the Paço de S. Cipriano, adapted to the romantic taste. Its Butter House is even of Renaissance architecture. It was transported to the seventeenth century tank, with lion-shaped spiders, in the early twentieth century. In the shrubs or tree species themselves, caves-like hideouts were served exotic drinks such as tea, coffee, and chocolate. The gardens and woods of Villar d` Allen, formed from several farms, are more related to the romantic spirit with sinuous, almost savage paths punctuated by architectural elements. Sezim gardens are closer to this English ideal where nature facilities, in nature, benefit from greater freedom. Among the exotic species are the “cameleiras” or “japoneiras” brought to Portugal from the Discoveries (first from China, after Japan) that resulted in species with Portuguese names, as in Villar d' Allen.In terms of the archives in the houses covered, we are faced with a lacuna situation. We can not say that documentation is scarce, since most of the houses studied were fortunate to remain within the same families and to be estimated. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a real concern to accumulate memories and documents (letters, postcards, receipts, notebooks) and, from these disorganized files, dispersed key documents.We conclude that everything is interconnected. Artists and performers circulated, appropriating public examples and transposing them into private individuals. The owners of the houses had relations with exchange of knowledge. Unfortunately, most of the studies that have been carried out and which are to be concluded do not fit the time and space of this dissertation, so we will limit ourselves to an image of artistic taste (or tastes) and ideals that underline the social and cultural function of these environments.
| Date of Award | 2009 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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| Supervisor | Gonçalo Vasconcelos e Sousa (Supervisor) |
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