Carlos Botelho

In one of them, we follow the curve of a street between pink façades, green balconies and almost bare trees. A ladder leaning against a roof catches our eye, among the many small details that invite a closer look. The other painting opens up a view across the houses towards the pale band of the Tagus, with dark tree branches outlined in the foreground. The soft colours bring the two landscapes together, though each offers us a different way into the city.

Fernando Namora wrote: “Carlos Botelho is the painter of Lisbon. Not the only one, of course, though perhaps the most captivated, which is also why there are so many Lisbons. This one, Carlos Botelho’s, almost always placid and luminous, almost always full of local character and rapture, a rose-coloured Nativity scene in which the object of worship is the river (a river of sailboats, a river of journeys, a river of wonder), this Lisbon of hushed, intimate lives, at times provincial and dressed in its Sunday best, at times contemplative and expectant, almost a stage set of serenity shadowed by the fear that a typhoon of vertigo might sweep through it, at other times on the verge of an outcry that will never become a roar or a shriek, this Lisbon of Carlos Botelho, its wanderer and its lover, this enigmatic Lisbon, more atmosphere than place, is for the painter, I believe, a kind of childhood memory, of time flowing within a time that refuses to die, perhaps an emotional pact that sought expression in colour. It is, ultimately, a lyrical frame for a way of being in the world that no other experience or temptation has ever managed to rival.”

Standing before these works, we sense that intimacy. Even without figures in the streets, we can imagine life behind the windows, on the balconies, in the closeness of the buildings. We can almost hear neighbours wishing one another good morning, a dog barking impatiently to be taken out, or the distinctive sound of a tram coming to a stop.

These everyday experiences shape Lisbon’s identity, of which São Mamede has been a part since 1968. An entire archive of catalogues and press clippings preserves decades of this relationship, allowing us to revisit exhibitions and discover how they were received at the time. Publications that accompanied an exhibition, such as the June 1972 catalogue, are now invaluable records of the city’s cultural history. The homecoming of these paintings adds a new chapter to that history and brings together two eras in the life of a gallery that has endured, preserving the city’s memory and taking pride in belonging to it.

Explore the works:  

View of Lisbon with the River Tagus, 1970

View of Lisbon, 1970