paintings, sculpture and decorative arts

The next three rooms display Portuguese paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as furniture and other decorative arts from longer periods (16th to 20th century); this was done in an attempt to evoke the atmosphere of a col-lector’s home.
While the paintings and sculptures are chronologically displayed – from Romanti-cism (first room), Naturalism (second room) to modern trends (third room) –, the pieces of furniture were not chronology displayed in the last room (where the oldest, from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, are presented). This was done to express the subjective choices of taste of collectors that often prevail over the chronological “ar-rangements” found in a typical Museum.

In the first room, visitors can find pieces related to the Romantic period, especially a set of drawings and watercolours of prominent figures from the Portuguese Royal House (19th century).
The second room shows the artistic productions of the last decades of the 19th cen-tury and the early decades of the 20th, essentially marked by the aesthetics of Natu-ralism, covering all sort of “genres” (portraiture, history painting, landscape, scenes from everyday life), and also the collector’s orientalist taste.

Finally, the last room tries to illustrate the various trends of Modernism, from the car-icaturists of the early 20th century to the artists of the 50s and 60s. Particular empha-sis is placed on the work of women artists, genres such as still life, landscape and urban panoramas are also represented, as well as the human figure, in various di-mensions and situations.