Landscape of Colares

In accordance with the conventions of the naturalist system, João Vaz isolates a piece of landscape in order to propose it, with silent peacefulness, as an allegory of Nature itself, whose beauty serves no ultimate purpose. The composition effectively consists of three grounds: the foreground, a dry piece of land on which the light is concentrated, preparing us, through contrast, for the vertical eruption of the slender bodies of the pine trees, which, in turn, define a fluid middle ground, linked to the recording of distance and resolved through the patch of the valley with its group of houses and the framing of the hills, punctuated by the shape of a monument, which is certainly the Palácio da Pena, in Sintra. The sky and the treetops occupy a third of the support, in a perspective effect achieved through the skilful overlapping of the themes, unified by a patch of brushstrokes that combines the colours in a variety of overtones, dominated by bluish greens that, by providing focal points for the gaze, open up room for different shades of white and red.
Underlying the painter’s work is a photographic aesthetics that allows us to see the landscape as if it were an optical device, registering a luminous moment with an intentional aura of permanence. It is this subtle game between what is instantly apparent and the construction of eternity – the long time of nature – that lies at the very core of naturalist painting: unlike the romantic landscape, it is as if the painter were not there, offering us his gaze as if it were our gaze, concentrating, in this mirrored perception, the impression of beauty.
As a painter, João Vaz was, above all, an artist who painted seascapes, remaining emotionally faithful to his childhood memories of a boy who lived by the riverside, having been born in Setúbal.
Raquel Henriques da Silva