Casa-Museu Dr Anastácio Gonçalves

Seems wherever we explore in Lisbon, there are wonderful, small museums (and some not so small). These are museums a bit 'off the tourist radar', perhaps more for locals, certainly more connected with their neighborhoods – like a good local eatery.

When we first moved to the Alameda-Saldanha area, the Casa-Museu Dr Anastácio Gonçalves (Google Arts & Culture tour) was closed. It re-opened a few weeks ago, and we've had it on our list to visit.

The Casa-Museu is a large house, yet dwarfed by the Sheraton Hotel and the office towers on the Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo. It also sits in a gated yard, but the yard is within the kind of concrete plaza that you'd expect to find at the base of an office tower (the Jardim Augusto Monjardino). Oddly, the plaza also joins the back of a maternity hospital (Maternidade Alfredo da Costa).

The Casa-Museu represents the intersection of three important Portuguese men from the turn of the twentieth century:

Malhoa: The house was originally built as a residence and studio for José Vital Branco Malhoa, a well-known, naturalismo (early-impressionist) portrait painter contemporary with, for example, John Singer Sargent or Robert Henri. The lively decorative tile on the exterior is of Malhoa's design, with the pediment declaring "Pro Arte". And there is a tile plaque on one side of the house naming it 'Casa Malhoa'.

Norte Júnior: The plaque also announces the building as the winner of the 1905 Prémio Valmor, Portugal's top architecture prize. The house was designed in by Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior. Perhaps his best-known work is the Café a Brasileira in the Largo do Chiado. We also know his Palacete Campo Grande (Alameda das Linhas Torres, Nº 22, ruins) from our old neighborhood of Alvalade. His buildings seems to ride a line between art nouveau and academic neoclassicism – perhaps in the same way that early impressionism grew from academic realism.

Anastácio Gonçalves: The house and the collections are the legacy of Dr António Anastácio Gonçalves, art patron and collector, who bought the house in 1932. Trained as an ophthamologist, Dr Anastácio Gonçalves worked primarily as a public health officer and was something of a war hero (he was at La Lys during the Great War, a story we learned at Batalha); thus he was a nationally-recognized medical leader.

Entrance to Casa-Museu is from the plaza area, not the street, through a stylized security screen.

 

The lobby is an infill between the main house and the house next door, which is now part of the Casa-Museu. 'Next door' houses a series of temporary galleries, which today is showing the 'white clay' art of Teresa Segurado Pavão in a show entitled Estrada Branca.

At first, I think that there are retrofitted basins in the antique wardrobes, but then I realize that the artist's work is being woven into the collection to re-contextualize the pieces. The small cups and clay boxes contain fragments of old Chinese porcelain, and are being shown beside old Chinese porcelain, or inside antique European furniture.

The first room of the Casa-Museu is the escritório (the Doutor's study). The first thing we notice is the large, low-hanging chandelier. All around the room are small cases and tables (maybe regency-era, the kind with straight, thin, pointy legs) mixed with intimate porcelain vases, tile, and portrait paintings. It's a little time capsule.

I ask the docent if this room is setup for show, and (thinking of the chandelier) was it previously the sala de jantar (dining room); she tells me that it's always been the escritório.

 

 

Down a narrow corridor, we find the sala de jantar, which features a large, arched-top, stained glass window (French). The dining table is set for just three people. The visitors' space is demarcated by a tall plexiglass shield. The room is already confined and the shield does not make viewing any easier; it also adds reflections of the colored glass on the opposite wall. Still, the glass art is vibrant and enchanting, and the scale of the windows does help to expand and enliven the room.

 

Turning the corner, there is a spacious casa de banho. It contains simple fixtures, but also includes what looks like an old-fashioned 'tankless' water heater (I spend as much time figuring out the water heater as most of the art).

At the far (west) end of the house is the quarto (the Doutor's sitting room and bed chamber).

 

The quarto contains some interesting objects, but our attention is shaken by the set of jars by Segurado Pavão, which are cunningly arranged in a glass case. We only realize they are contemporary works when we see that the tops are made of animal bones.

We retrace our way to the east and pass a portrait of Dr Anastácio Gonçalves painted by Malhoa. It is clear the two men know each other. The portrait is dated 1932, which is the same year that Dr Anastácio Gonçalves bought Casa Malhoa at auction.

 

Upstairs there is a tight, winding gallery with a low ceiling and several small landscapes. This leads to o ultímo quarto, a tall, bright reception space, and an annex to the atelier. On the north wall is another arched-top glass window, with birds and flowers, adding more texture than color.

The atelier itself is really the only 'grand' room in the house. Again, on the north wall there is a double-height, clear-glass window to provide even light while working. The low-ceiling of the entrance gallery is also the floor of a balcony-mezzanine, now used to display more paintings.

We ask the docent if this is where Malhoa displayed paintings to his clients, and she tells us that the balcony used be his library.

Apparently the estate of the painter António da Silva Porto is also included in the collection, which accounts for a number of seemingly unfinished studies and paintings, many with stray paint marks and color studies around the subject.

All in all, another engaging, 'local', cultural resource.