Agostinho José da Mota (18 June 1824 – 21 August 1878) was a Brazilian painter and teacher.

Biography

He was born in Rio de Janeiro. His inclination for art emerged early in childhood. In 1837 he enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He was a brilliant student and received the prize of travel to Europe in 1850. He left the following year for Rome where he studied under the guidance of French landscape painter

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. He spent 8 years in Italy and produced works of true merit there. Returning to Brazil in 1859 he began to teach at the Academy. Initially he occupied the chair of drawing and then of landscape. He contributed several times to the general exhibition of fine arts, receiving the gold medal in 1852, the Order of the Rose in 1868 and the Order of Christ in 1871. Amongst his pupils, Modesto Brocos, Henrique Bernardelli,

Pedro Peres Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning ...

Firmino Monteiro Antônio Firmino Monteiro (22 February 1855 – 3 July 1888) was an Afro-Brazilian painter. Biography He was born into poverty in Rio de Janeiro, and in his youth had to work as a clerk, printer and bookbinder to help support his family. A ...

and

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became well known. The Empress Teresa Cristina commissioned several still lifes from him, a genre in which he excelled. He was the pioneer of outdoor painting in Brazil, preceding

Georg Grimm Johann Georg Grimm (1846–1887) was a German painter, designer and decorator who is best known for the work he produced during a lengthy stay in the Empire of Brazil. Biography He was the son of a successful carpenter and was initiall ...

, who received the credit for this. In later life he faced financial difficulties, having to paint advertising hoardings to survive. He died in 1878 in Rio de Janeiro.

References

Agostinho José da Mota em ''Pitoresco''
1824 births 1878 deaths 19th-century Brazilian painters 19th-century Brazilian male artists {{Brazil-painter-stub