Malas noticias

Mas Noticias means bad news, and the whole small drama sits in a woman's face as she takes in a letter. Rodolfo Amoedo painted it in 1895 and showed it in Rio de Janeiro at one of the young Brazilian republic's first large fine-art exhibitions. Amoedo had trained in Paris, and the picture wears that schooling openly, in the soft finish and the elegant dark dress that recall the society portraits then fashionable in France. Brazil at that moment was building a national art on European foundations, and Amoedo was among the painters expected to lead it. What the letter says is never explained. We are left with the moment of reading alone, and the hand that has let the page sink toward her lap. It hangs in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio.