MASP

Castagneto was a sailor, following in the footsteps of his father, with whom he moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1874. He studied under Victor Meirelles (1832-1903) and George Grimm (1846-1887) at the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes, where he enrolled in 1876, understating his age to circumvent the school’s age limit rules. He referred to himself as a mere “painter of boats,” painting seascapes, often in a makeshift studio set up on a boat. He created impasto oil paintings with broad strokes nimbly applied to canvases or other rigid materials, often the covers of cigar boxes. His work represented a fresh approach in Brazilian painting, introducing a more sensitive, intuitive and modern approach. The painting Gun Salute on a Gala Day at the Rio de Janeiro Bay (1887) was the centerpiece of one of the controversies that marked his turbulent relationship with the Academia. It was one of the artist’s most ambitious undertakings, a fact which nonetheless failed to save him from being barred from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes for disrespecting the values espoused by the academics.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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The painting Gun Salute on National Festive Day at the Rio de Janeiro Bay shows the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, leaving on a trip to Europe on June 30, 1887, aboard the packet boat Gironde, accompanied by cuirassed Aquidaban and Riachuelo. When the sovereign’s ship drops anchor at Ilha Rasa, the sailors climb the rigging and hail the emperor while the artillery fires a twenty-one gun salute. This is the largest painting made by the artist in his whole career, and with it he hoped to gain favor with the Academia and get it to acquire the work as a means of subsidizing “a trip he intends to make to Italy with the purpose of perfecting himself in the art in which he received his first lessons at the Academia of Rio de Janeiro”, in the artist’s own words, as quoted by Maciel Levy. The painting was rejected by the institution, not without a highly unfavorable evaluation which had a devastating effect on the artist’s morale. The canvas was shown at Glace Élégante, and set off a violent controversy between critics of the Diário Ilustrado and Revista Ilustrada newspapers. The critiques were analyzed and transcribed by Maciel Levy (1982, pp. 32-33).

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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