O Anhanguera by Theodoro Braga: dissonances of a controversial figure within São Paulo’s bandeirantismo

Abstract

The life and oeuvre of Theodoro Braga has been highlighted by contemporary
historiography due to his importance in the decorative arts and his role in formulating a Brazilian national identity, activity that permeates his entire career as a painter and educator. As pointed out by some authors, however, the artist also has significant importance in the field of historical
painting. One of his best-known works is O Anhanguera (1930), the most famous and reproduced portrait of the bandeirante Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva. The painting has belonged to the Museu Paulista collection since 1960, when it was donated by Maria da Silva Braga, Braga’s widow. Until a few years ago, the museum lacked all information about its production process, its insertion in Braga’s artistic production, its circulation before 1960, as well as the relationship between
the painter and the Museu Paulista and the work’s relationship with the patterns of representation within the bandeirante iconography established by Afonso Taunay, then the museum’s director. These relationships were investigated here by means of a documentary survey in periodicals
of the time. Data analysis, together with the literature review on the creation and consolidation of the mythological “bandeirante hero” and its patterns of representation in the Museu Paulista collection, show that Theodoro Braga’s works were excluded from official commissions and purchases made by Taunay for not fitting the imposed canon. Such exclusion, however, did not stop his paintings from being acquired by the São Paulo state official collections starting in 1945 foward, when Taunay left the museum’s administration.