Young Lady from Minho

In this work we witness a domestic scene of a full body painting of a woman dressed on the style of Minho. The model is her daughter Maria, a constant presence on the works by this artist. This pictorial composition is an example of a poetics developed throughout his life as a painter and poet, which displays the state of the soul through means of long brush strokes: the colour offered by the smooth flow of the stroke breaks down the elements to wrap them in a sensation with metaphorical values, that is, the subjective point of view by the meditative person gazing at us. The lines of the composition converge on her with a family intimacy and complicity, so that the pouring and undefined brush strokes confer a dreamy and smiley expression to the Young Lady from Minho. Carneiro was the only painter of the Portuguese Symbolism who explored spirituality and captured feelings, thereby gaining the title of “Portraitist of Souls”.