Pedro Américo

Relenting to the government's requests, Américo returned to Brazil in 1869, first passing through Portugal, where at the end of the year he married Carlota de Araújo Porto-Alegre (1844–1918), daughter of Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, then Brazilian consul in Lisbon. With her he would later have three children. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1870s and began to dedicate himself to painting mythological and historical canvases and portraits. At the Imperial Academy he taught archeology, art history and aesthetics. He also wrote, directed the numismatics and archeology sections of the Imperial and National Museum, and made caricatures for the periodical A Comédia Social. But when he returned from Europe, he was still an unknown painter to Brazilians. A teaching career did not offer many prospects for fame and fortune, the Brazilian art market was still incipient, and it appears that he had a difficult, proud and self-sufficient personality, which earned him several disaffections. However, taking advantage of the wave of patriotism unleashed by the Brazilian victory in the Paraguayan War, and encouraged by the emperor, he painted the canvas Batalha do Campo Grande, a large-scale composition in which he sought to praise the monarchy and the main hero in the battle, the Count of Eu. Gaining the support of the press, he organized an intense promotional campaign for his work. Between August and September 1871, almost not a day passed without newspapers from Rio de Janeiro talking about the artist or the canvas, which was visited by more than 60,000 people. At the same time, Luís Guimarães Júnior published a short, highly romanticized biography of the artist, which gained wide circulation and increased Americo's popularity. As a result, by the end of the year he had become a famous painter throughout the country, receiving commissions and distinctions, such as the Imperial Order of the Rose in the degree of officer (later promoted to Grand Dignitary and Commander) and the title of Historical Painter of the Imperial Chamber, but also becoming the center of great controversy.

In this period and in the same spirit Américo also produced Fala do Trono, Ataque à Ilha do Carvoeiro, Passo da Pátria, Passagem do Chaco, and began the sketches for the government's of what was one of his greatest masterpieces, the large Batalha de Avaí, which was painted in Florence beginning in 1874 and being finished only in 1877. When first exhibited in Florence, still incomplete, it caused a sensation among art connoisseurs who had gathered in large numbers in the city for the celebrations of the fourth centenary of Michelangelo's birth. The work and a speech Américo delivered in two languages before the Renaissance master's statue of David, spread his fame throughout Europe, being celebrated in a number of articles and news as one of the greatest painters of his time. The Italian government, echoing the widespread praise, asked Américo for a portrait to appear with the luminaries of art of all times in the portrait gallery of the Uffizi, being exhibited among those of Ingres and Flandrin, Américo's own masters. When it was exhibited in Brazil, at the Imperial Academy General Exhibition of 1879, alongside the Batalha de Guararapes by Victor Meirelles, it aroused an even greater controversy than the previous battle. But the arguments were similar: the critics mainly attacked an alleged excess of fantasy and romanticism, as well as little historical accuracy i

After the Republic was proclaimed in Brazil on 15 November 1889, a change that led to the ostracism of another great academic painter of his generation, Victor Meirelles, Pedro Américo, back in Brazil, managed to maintain part of his prestige with the government, although he was also fired from the Imperial Academy as his colleague. The academy was restructured as the National School of Fine Arts. Américo produced more important works for the new regime: Tiradentes esquartejado (part of a projected series on the Minas Gerais Conspiracy that he did not perform), Libertação dos escravos and Honra e Pátria e Paz e Concórdia. In 1890 he was elected deputy for Pernambuco at the Constituent Congress and during his term he defended the creation of museums, galleries and universities throughout the country, but his already fragile health prevented him from attending the sessions assiduously. Over the course of his career Américo amassed considerable wealth by investing in government bonds, but with the financial crisis triggered by the Encilhamento policy, his investments suddenly went down in value and he was ruined. In 1894, impoverished, his health deteriorating and his eyesight impaired, he moved permanently to Florence. Despite his problems, he still painted and wrote, publishing the novels O Foragido in 1899, and Na Cidade Eterna in 1901. Américo died in Florence on 7 October 1905, victim of "lead colic", a supposed intoxication by the paints he used. By order of the President of Brazil, Rodrigues Alves, and under the care of the Baron of Rio Branco, his body was embalmed and transferred to Rio de Janeiro, where it was exposed for a few days at the War Arsenal. He was then sent to João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba, where he received solemn obsequies between official mourning, the city's shops were closed and a crowd of admirers. On 29 April 1906, he was provisionally deposited in the São João Batista Cemetery, until the finishing of the mausoleum that the Historical and Geographical Institute of Brazil had ordered to be built it in Areia, Américo's hometown. The final burial in his hometown took place on 9 May 1906, also surrounded by great tributes. The house where he was born is now a museum dedicated to his memory, the Casa Museu Pedro Américo.

In Américo's generation, the Empire of Brazil was internally entering a phase of reasonable stability, it asserted itself as the greatest South American power and its economy and culture were diversifying and expanding. There were many problems, certainly, but they were sought to be overcome in an atmosphere of liberalism and scientism, in which the influence of the Church declined and the secular sectors of society were strengthened. It was in the interest of the nation, as well as the current monarchy, for the country to favorably insert itself into a world economy undergoing rapid transformation and which was structured on a capitalist model. To achieve this goal, emperor Pedro II, a lover of the arts and sciences who in 1856 had written that the two great works he needed to accomplish were "to morally organize the nationality and form an elite", promoted a nationalist program of internal modernization and dissemination of Brazil abroad. Knowing the power of art as a formulator and consecration of symbols and values, within his program Pedro II reserved a special role for it, in charge of visually articulating the ideas of the new Empire. Activities focused on the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1816 and for many years in precarious operation, but since the 1850s it had been restructured and energized by a more consistent and enlightened state sponsorship and by the work of scholars such as Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre. Pedro Américo flourished during the height of Academicism in Brazil. However, despite significant advances in the art system, patronage conditions at the time were unpredictable and the lack of official funding was a chronic problem. As for the private market, it was just beginning to take shape. Academicism systematized a repertoire of visual formulas possessing specific meanings, prescribing rules for their use, as if dictionarizing the history of visuality and organizing it in a peculiar grammar and semantics. More than that, it established a method of teaching art based on hierarchies of values largely derived from the philosophical and educational tradition of Classical Antiquity, with all its list of idealistic moral and civic virtues and all its rhetoric, manifested in art through beauty, harmony and a public utility. Functioning in close dependence on the States and elites, and having an idealistic philosophical basis, the European Academies naturally tended to be conservative, a characteristic that the Brazilian version shared with their European counterparts on whose imitation it was founded, but they were also agents of important artistic advances and on many occasions they were even avant-garde.

Américo possessed a sophisticated technique, paid great attention to detail and was quick to work. He was always an academic, but a versatile and eclectic one in the most influential and most contradictory phase of international academicism, which defined itself as a complex mixture of classical, romantic and realist references. Américo's work expressed idealistic aspirations typical of classicism, reflected in his "didactic" historical paintings and moralizing allegories, in his sense of hierarchical composition, and even in his humanist writings; his detailed characterization of figures and objects sometimes approaches realism, but his stylistic expression is mostly romantic, which was not really a contradiction, since romanticism was by itself an eclectic and idealistic current and very much indebted to the classics. But Brazilian Romanticism in painting, where Pedro Américo is included, was that of the third romantic generation, when the movement had already lost its original, passionate and revolutionary character, transforming itself into a softer and more conformist, more aesthetic and sentimental current, which quickly became bourgeois and in many ways genuinely "popular". Among the artists who were possibly an influence on Américo's most important works are Horace Vernet, Antoine-Jean Gros, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault and François Gérard, as well as the Italian painters of the Risorgimento, such as Luigi Bechi. Some critics also find in him Baroque influences from Borgognone and Bernini.

"History painting" did not just mean the representation of historical events, but it was the recreation of facts especially significant to a community or nation. It developed a symbolic visual rhetoric and had a moralizing didactic function. It was the most prestigious genre in the academic system, being the one that demanded the most from the artist in terms of creativity, general cultural knowledge and technical skill, it was also the one that could most easily convey an ethical message and the one that could most perfectly illustrate the discourse of the elites, consecrating its values, addressing itself above all to the general public. To achieve its goals, history painting could work with religious themes, properly historical, or absorb mythical figures from the classical past to allegorically lend greater brightness to current events, or to evoke exemplary virtues. History painting is defined by its subject and purpose, not its style. The genre has an immemorial origin, but it was consolidated in the Baroque period, when European absolutism was developing. In this system power is centralized, and all means are used to guarantee the sovereign's total independence and supremacy and assert his glory. From the Baroque onwards, the historical genre entered its golden phase, when the potential of its visual rhetoric was perceived and explored in depth by elites and governments, and, indifferent to the change in styles over the successive centuries, continued to serve the same purposes, always more linked to the civil sphere of society, although it could often incorporate religious elements in a period when Religion and the State lived in close proximity and the doctrine of the divine right of kings was articulated. The iconography produced, exalting the State and its King or representatives, its deeds and military conquests, often showing them blessed by God or by his angels and saints, or surrounded by classical divinities or personifications of virtues, justified, through an art that should amaze, seduce and above all convince and indoctrinate both subjects and foreigners, the maintenance of a system that was capable of such impressive feats in politics as in the arts, which acted in mutual favor. When neoclassicism arrived, the model was simply revisited once more. The genre did not take root in Baroque Brazil because there was no court that sponsored it or academies that taught it; the territory was a Portuguese colony and its painting, almost entirely based on religious worship, was made in a corporative and semi-artisanal system. When Joachim Lebreton, the leader of the French Artistic Mission, defined the structure of the first academy in Brazil in a memorandum to king John VI in 1816, historical painting was already "provided for" in the curriculum, since Lebreton, himself an academic, merely traced his project based on the structure of the academy in Paris, reputed to be the most advanced of all that existed at the time throughout the West.

However, as its tropical version took a long time to work and Brazil, an independent Empire since 1822, was in perennial upheaval and could not present anything too grandiose to be proud of in the face of a disaffected population still indifferent to the academic arts, the genre did not immediately prosper. The examples left by the French Mission painters, Jean-Baptiste Debret and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, were rare, very modest in scale and did not always portray Brazilian events. Nationalis

Despite being best known for his civic paintings, these constitute but a fraction of Américo's complete work. When writing in 1864 for the painter Victor Meirelles, Américo stated that it was the biblical theme, especially the Old Testament, that most attracted him: "My nature is different. I don't think I bend easily to the passing demands of the customs of each age... my passion, only sacred history satisfies it." Américo devoted most of the second phase of his career to this genre, also highly regarded by academics, considered a branch of historical painting, starting in the 1880s. Despite their religious theme, biblical paintings typified their bourgeois romanticism by decorative emphasis and for the love for exoticism. In addition to being a personal preference, they were a reflection of a change in context and catered to the taste of a new, bourgeois and sentimental audience, which was not a market for traditional historical works, but began to appreciate images that were more related to their own reality or were consumables without further complications. Despite preferring the biblical themes as inspiration, Américo did not fail to penetrate other popular areas at the time, bringing literary and medievalist themes to the canvases as well.

In part, this shift in general preferences towards the prosaic and accessible were due to the rise of realistic aesthetics, progressively incorporated by academics at the end of the 19th century, and the popularization of photography, which painters such as Pedro Américo began to make use of as a painting aid. In this context, academic painting continued to be appreciated by the bourgeoisie, which did not despise either the prestige aura with which it was still covered, nor the high technical quality of its production. Ivan Coelho de Sá noted that:

"Bourgeois society, both in Europe and in Brazil – where it had a late development as a result of the historical mismatch – had a very strong identification with academicism, above all for the thematic wealth and versatility that made possible a true journey to a world of dream and fantasy: Greco-Roman heroism, historical revivalism, biblical and literary drama, bucolism, oriental exoticism and new urban types. At a time when there was still no cinema, whose first steps were only taken at the end of the 19th century, theater and, above all, opera, were the only rivals to the visual, rhetorical and narrative potential of academic art."

For this audience, Pedro Américo left a significant production, although little studied, remaining in the shadow of his historical paintings. This part of his work was severely criticized by the modernists as they thought it had an excess of sentimentality and intellectualism, which would have led Américo to affectation and artificiality. Such attacks left such a negative mark on him that to this day this production is largely forgotten or despised. Among the works of this theme that can be highlighted are David em seus últimos dias é aquecido pela jovem Abisag, a rare piece for its provocative sensualism, the second version of A Carioca, Abelardo e Heloísa, Judite rende graças a Jeová por ter conseguido livrar sua pátria dos horrores de Holofernes, O Voto de Heloísa, Os filhos de Eduardo IV, A rabequista árabe, Joana d'Arc ouve pela primeira vez a voz que lhe prediz o seu alto destino, Visão de Hamlet and Jocabed levando Moisés até o Nilo.

Pedro Américo also left several theoretical works in history, natural philosophy and fine arts, as well as poetry and novels. However, this production is much less known and studied than his paintings, and its value has been questioned, but it is important for revealing other facets of Américos's thinking. His first literary essays were poems written while he was studying at the Pedro II College, and his most relevant text is Science and Systems: Questions of Natural History and Philosophy, a thesis he defended at the Free University of Brussels. Considered the summary of his philosophical conception, he was well received and secured the position of adjunct professor at the university. The thesis dealt with the historical evolution of the arts, philosophy and science, seeking a Renaissance universality of thought, and handled a great number of erudite references from various areas of knowledge. Carolina Invernizio's analysis highlighted Américo's opposition to positivism, a very influential philosophy in France and Brazil at the time, and his more direct affiliation, according to Sílvio Romero and José de Carvalho, was the spiritualist strand of French eclecticism, approaching the thinking of Victor Cousin, Jules Michelet and Edgar Quinet. For Américo, science, as well as art, should be exempt from particular obligations, abolishing dogmas, arbitrary opinions and exclusivist systems, seeing as essential to their flourishing free investigation, free creation and free thought. In the thesis preface, Américo warned that:

"If this book had been written in Brazil, it would certainly lack local color, since none of the issues that I address with some developments are treated here from a national point of view; therefore, anyone who reads it without thinking about this fact – that the moral and intellectual situation of Europe differs greatly from ours – would find it, in many ways, empty and meaningless. But, is it necessary to write a book to prove that science is free? To prove that we perhaps have an immaterial soul, or else that man is a rational animal?... But for anyone who has followed the historical development of science and knows the current situation of spirits in Europe, all these questions present themselves as many other problems whose solutions, constantly challenged by exclusivist spirits, always deserve to be renewed in the truest and most impartial sense".

His other essays generally dealt with the same themes, pointing to education as the premise of progress, debating the nature of beauty and the ideal, affirming the primacy of art in the social order and its inherent educational and civilizing role, valuing the testimony of history and scientific investigation, and preaching an alliance between reason and sensitivity in the classical way. The same inclination can be seen in part of his correspondence and in the texts on aesthetics and art history that he published through newspapers, such as the Philosophical Considerations on Fine Arts among the Ancients: Art as an Educational Principle (1864), published as a series of 22 articles in the newspaper Correio Mercantil, in Rio de Janeiro, which constituted a pioneering milestone in the history of education and the press in Brazil. His writing is generally very articulate, moving quickly between diverse references. In these works, Américo also often made social, economic, historical and political criticism, complaining about Brazil's backwardness in relation to European natio

His novels are ultra-romantic narratives of extreme sentimentality, associated with a realistic, almost photographic description of environments and details. They are semi-autobiographical, manichean, argumentative, asymmetrical, proselytizing, in which typically young men from poor families, but with integrity, heroically try to climb the steps of improvement by their own effort, in the midst of infinite torments and the opposition of the forces of evil, represented by the incomprehension, envy, lack of perspective and the apathy of others. In fact, in his four novels, three have protagonists who were born and lived their youth in the sertão, a Brazilian region where Américo was born and raised, notorious for the poverty of its population and for its semi-arid environment. In the novel Holocausto, Américo's hometown, which serves as the setting for the plot, is vividly described in its geographical details and urban profile. As the protagonists are sensitive young people, they are inclined towards the arts, but for that very reason they suffer more intensely in the face of misfortunes. They fall in love with equally virtuous and intellectual girls, but their love is also opposed by treacherous and evil people. In general, these pure young people live martyred, victims of their own innate nobility and sophistication, etiolated in a barbaric and rude environment. The result is often tragic. The plots are not limited to fiction, delving into social, political and cultural issues present in their time. In the introduction to Holocausto, a "philosophical novel of character and customs", the best known of his novels, appreciated by Joaquim Nabuco, Giulio Piccini and other intellectuals from Brazil and Europe, Américo presents the didactic intention:

"Inspired by the vivid recollection of events which have largely taken place in my presence, or in that of friends worthy of the greatest credit, the story of the singular existence that I have tried to sketch here will serve to demonstrate how much our society has progressed in the last quarter of a century, and, at the same time, how far it has to walk to deserve the incomparable country that God has designated for us as a scenario."

However, right at the beginning of the novel, the gypsy character Rhadamina makes a dismal prediction for the protagonist, Agavino, which serves as the structuring axis of the entire narrative — all the gypsy's predictions are confirmed — and allows the reader to capture something of the oppressive psychological atmosphere which is very present in the text, as well as analyzing Américo's writing style:

"You will be a great wretch, because you have talents, virtues and a pure heart. I don't need to read your destiny in the palm of your right hand, because it is written on your forehead and in your actions. Oh, how it will be for you. Sad existence!... People, country, great and small, wise and ignorant, everything will mock you when they see you pass, saddened and afflicted, on the path of duty and sacrifice. Sad and lonely like a convict in his cell, nor at least you will be able to smile at the woman you love, without immediately feeling on your lips the bitterness of myrrh and the brush of wild thistle. In vain you will invoke the justice of men: it will mock your naivety, and even chase you for madness. Expeled from the bosom of your fatherland, you shall return to it like a weaning child... The balm of hope will be withheld from you... Do you know what the l

A charismatic and controversial figure, Américo had a unique intellectual preparation among Brazilian artists of his time, and he had a high opinion of himself and his achievements. He was "deified, fought, loved and rejected", as Gonzaga Duque had said. Américo produced a complex and eclectic work, was involved in major controversies throughout his career and made countless friends and detractors both in life and posthumously. In 1871, when Américo was less than 30 years old, his first biography appeared, written by Luís Guimarães Júnior, a laudatory and dramatic propaganda piece symptomatically entitled Um Milionário de Glórias, which was distributed throughout Brazil and also published abroad, placing Américo in the position of heroic founder of the Brazilian school of painting, and which is the primary source of the various biographies that emerged later, almost all of which were also partial and exaggerated in the contemporary perspective, but which reveal the intensity of the enthusiasm that Américo and his work could arouse. In the opinion of Silvano Bezerra da Silva, the different activities he performed, as an artist, essayist, politician, novelist, and others, "in addition to indicating a restless personality, also indicate Pedro Américo's insistence on overcoming the limitations of the environment, and to impose himself as an intellectual endowed with plural qualities". But in the words of Rafael Cardoso, "anyone who knows a little about Pedro Américo's biography and writings will know that it is not appropriate to attach too much importance to his almost unlimited self-contemplation. It is not surprising that a man who, in addition to considering himself the greatest painter of his the time, boasted of having refuted Bacon, Kant and Comte in the field of philosophy and even risked as a novelist, attributed to his own works a high historical value". Américo had a strong sense of professional independence, being a skillful negotiator of his interests with clients, the press and official sponsors. He didn't always get everything he wanted, but his international success is partly due to his dynamism and assertiveness in this regard. At only fifteen years old, already aware of his talent, he had requested the personal sponsorship of the emperor, and throughout his career he sought his promotion systematically, obtaining an unprecedented international response for a Brazilian, being the subject of about 300 articles published in many countries of the world. Europe, mainly Italy and Germany, besides, of course, Brazil, most of them with great praise for his talent. Ernesto Gomes Moreira Maia, interim director of Imperial Academy, was an example: "The paintings by Dr. Pedro Américo, almost all of them suitable only for galleries due to their dimensions, form a collection of great merit, both for their perfect execution and for the feeling of an idealistic composition; and although the artist's detractors look for imaginary defects in them, the paintings will remain for the glory of their author and the school from which they came, and the honor of those who give them due appreciation". Laudelino Freire also remarked that: "The work of Pedro Américo... stands out in the creative unity of the manifestations of genius. At no time in our evolution, painting had brushes that translated it with accents of such high inspiration of the noblest thought and superiority of expression". And diplomat José Manuel Cardoso de Oliveira stated that h

Even with much praise, Américo's work was not immune to the scrutiny of critics linked to emerging modernism. For Gonzaga Duque, after Batalha do Avaí – which although "confusing", "incomprehensible" and "full of defects" was "the greatest work of art that Brazil has" – Américo had stagnated: "No progress has been made in the span of five years... I will not say, however, that it has stopped forever; this is not the case; but I will say that some power, above the artist's will, has removed his mentality from the works of our time, from our aspirations of our aesthetic feeling, of the needs of our time". Duque also attacked Américo's philosophical writings and novels, saying that the artist embarked on areas that did not concern him, only out of vanity, and whose fruits were anachronisms that only satisfied frivolous spirits: "It was not enough for him to conquer the secrets of his art, he wished moreover, he sought the honors of a parchment, graduated from the Sorbonne and then obtained a doctorate in Belgium. The crisis of greatness came to him, which repeated itself several times in his life". Angelo Agostini was relentless in his sarcasm. About A Noite com os gênios do Estudo e do Amor, Agostini said that Américo threw "whipped egg whites into space! Nice thought (if it is his), but as for the execution... detestable! What a disaster!"; about Judite rende graças a Jeová por ter conseguido livrar sua pátria dos horrores de Holofernes, Agostini stated that "[she] thanks Jehovah for having managed to behead Holofernes without bleeding or wrinkling her beautiful toilet, nor her beautiful hands. What cleanliness!"; and about Jocabed levando Moisés até o Nilo, who on the painting raises her hand to her face with an anxious expression, Agostini commented that "before parting with her son, Moses' mother feels a deep toothache." Oscar Guanabarino stated that:

"Historical painting, so recommended and demanded, always presented historical facts that had no relation to our lives. Pedro Américo, professor of archeology, falling into constant errors in this matter, gave us Joan of Arc, Moses, Judith, Heloise and Abelard, Voltaire, and so many other paintings of foreign themes, when our own history still was, as it is, unexplored; and as this painter was the one who gave the note at that time, all the others followed him in the waters and there came the biblical collections, in which St. Jerome did not fail".

The controversies that Américo's works often caused were aimed not only at him as an artist, but also as a symbol. For Cybele Fernandes, "in fact, the Academy of Fine Arts and the entire system that it represented, its methods, processes, teachers, and politics, as well as the maturation of society in relation to art and its social function were also evaluated". Although Américo's civic paintings rose to fame as soon as they were exposed and recognized by the establishment, as was the case with Batalha de Campo Grande, Batalha do Avaí and Independência ou Morte!, they still bothered enough people, who saw in them a falsification of the factual truth of the events portrayed. According to Elias Saliba, in that period of accelerated technical and scientific innovations, the large public was already used to the visual fidelity of photography, and wished to see in the historical paintings the same scientific accuracy, and no longer the abstract and idealistic conventions of the old academic tradition. However, there were no image records of the e

Américo was twice accused of plagiarism, in the works Batalha do Avaí and Independência ou Morte! The first, said to be copied from Giovanni Fattori's painting on the Battle of Montebello, and the second, from Ernest Meissonier's work on the Battle of Friedland. The issue caused controversy at the time. If there was imitation, its intentionality has never been proven, and if there are similar elements between the paintings, this is most likely due to the habit, common to all academic artists, of replicating or varying formal stereotyped models widely used within the visual repertoire of the academic style. About Independência ou Morte!, according to Pedro Américo, he only got to know the other work a year after he had finished his. Américo himself preferred to expose the problem in his Discourse on Plagiarism, where he defended the idea that what matters most in art is not the invention of new forms, but their constant improvement. In fact, the entire academic system was largely based on the authority of consecrated masters and on the perpetuation, both imitative and creative, of the foundations they left behind; the concept of plagiarism was just beginning to be articulated in the way it is known today.

While still alive, Pedro Américo received the honors of Historical Painter from the Imperial Chamber; Officer, Grand Dignitary and Commander of the Imperial Order of the Rose; Grand Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher and was decorated by king William I of Prussia. He was a member of several European academies. He is the patron of chair number 24 of the Academy of Letters of Paraíba. His painting Fala do Trono was printed on a Telebrás system phone card. He gives his name to a square in João Pessoa and has a bust in his honor in via Maggio in Florence. In his hometown there is a street named after him and the house where he was born today is as a museum in his memory. The cover art of the album As Days Get Dark by Arab Strap features one of his paintings.