BY ANTONIO TEIXEIRA LOPES, DATED 1918

António Teixeira Lopes (d.1942), the son of José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes, an important ceramist and sculptor, was born in Porto in 1866. He was taught sculpture in his father's workshop and from 1882-84, while working at the ceramic factory of Devesas, studied under the eminent Marques de Oliveira and Soares dos Reis at the Academy of Fine Arts, Porto. On being awarded a government funded bursary to study sculpture he subsequently moved to Paris to attend the l'École des Arts Décoratif. The Paris Salon provided Lopes the opportunity to admire the works of Rodin, Merci, Falguière and Barrias. From the late 1880s, he regularly exhibited at the Salon receiving an honorable mention in 1889 for a plaster statue, The Boyhood of Cain, and the following year he was awarded a gold medal for another plaster group, The Widow. Returning to Lisbon, he executed three works of exceptional quality and impact between 1899 and 1904, L'Histoire, for the Prazeres cemetery, Lisbon, Flora , an allegorical tribute, and a statue of Eça de Queiroz. At the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, he submitted eleven sculptures in different medium including Agricultura, La Douleur, L'Histoire and La Charité, receiving a Grand Prix and was awarded the Légion d'honneur in consequence. With respect to his work as a whole, The Studio commented on 'an undefined charm, the creation of highly imaginative mind and a temperament dreamy and melancholy' (The Studio, 1906, vol. 38, p. 178).