painter, father of cartoonist Vasco de Loureiro , was born in Oporto, Portugal and studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Oporto and l’ademie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1880-82. He lived in Fontainebleau, London and Surrey before he came to Australia with his Tasmanian wife. He painted and exhibited with Buvelot, Roberts, Conder and Streeton in Melbourne. His portrait of a young girl with bird, Young Companions , signed and dated 'Arthur Loueiro/Surrey 1884’, oil on canvas, was offered Christie’s Australian and European Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Part 1 , Melbourne, 29 April 1997, lot 41. A comparable oil on panel of a little girl seated in a field attributed to de Loureiro, which had been purchased from Deutscher-Menzies November 2000, lot 84, was offered for sale by Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery in September 2002, cat. 35 ($28,000).

Death of Burke 1892 (p.c.: included in Tim Bonyhady’s exhibition) was painted from sketches of the place Burke had died supplied by Alfred Howitt . Loureiro himself spent 'months sketching and painting in the open bush, with a view to getting actual atmospheric effects and colouring’. When it was first exhibited at Melbourne in 1892 critics commended it as 'one of the most important’ pictures painted in Australia and 'the most speaking monument’ to the dead explorers, although Frederick McCubbin complained to Tom Roberts: 'This is no primeval desert, but a bit of cattle-graing country where the grass has been sown’ and, ironicially, accused Loureiro’s Burke of 'dying within coo-ee of Heidelberg’ (Bonyhady after Andrew McKenzie, The “Proff”’ and Jane Clark Golden Summers ).

Writers:

Staff Writer
mendej

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2012