Bordalo at the table

Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro was a hearty eater! His multifaceted work mirrors his taste for sitting at the table to enjoy fine gastronomy. But it also provides a record of diet, cookery, eating spaces and table etiquette from the last quarter of the 19th century to the start of the 20th century. Like authors of the time, Eça de Queiroz, Ramalho Ortigão and Fialho de Almeida (the last two, his literary collaborators), the artist portrayed Portuguese society at the table, without excluding himself. The exhibition ‘Bordalo at the table’, organised by Pedro Bebiano Braga, invites you to a varied tasting of this delicious aspect of Bordalo’s work.

Food and Cooking

Rafael Bordalo’s drawings, paintings and ceramics represent the food and drink that were traditionally bought at market, from street vendors, or in shops, provisions suppliers and warehouses in the capital. There are food products from market gardens and farms in the outskirts, from the river or the sea, or those produced industrially, for which the artist designed labels, packaging and advertising, particularly adverts published in the proof copies and pages of his journals.

In his edible allusions, we frequently see: salt cod, whiting, eels, lobster, crab and various shellfish; turkey, chicken, mutton, pork and smoked sausage; bread, beans, onion, garlic, cabbage, lettuce, tomato, turnip; chestnuts, apples, grapes, melon, pineapple; butter, biscuits, such as the O António Maria biscuits, pastries and ice cream. In terms of drinks, we see wines, in particular, including the Bordalo Pinheiro Port wine, tea and hot chocolate; in lesser quantities we see coffee, syrups, liqueurs, cognac, soda, gin, beer, champagne, etc.

Outside the home, we see the popular habit among Lisbon natives of going to the orchards, frequenting eateries such as Perna de Pau, in Areeiro, or Águia Roxa (formerly Papagaio), in Estrada de Sacavém, to sample delicacies and titbits, cooked over an open fire or clay oven. But Rafael Bordalo also reports on urban daily life, on civilised consumption at the café table, or even, in the restaurant with a chef recognised by gourmets, citing the great João da Mata. Nor does he forget domestic spaces, the kitchen and its hearth, or the dining room table.

Metaphors in Bordalo’s work

The purchase of foods, cookery and the table offer countless metaphors for political criticism. The slaughter of pigs and its importance in the domestic economy, on a national scale, takes on a double metaphorical meaning. Expressions of the time such as ‘mão de nabos’ (lit. hand of turnips, meaning a bunch of idiots), ‘castanha da boa’ (the street sellers’ cry for chestnuts, but also meaning a punch in the face), ‘caldo entornado’ (lit. spilled soup, meaning to go down the drain), ‘desaguisado’ (lit. a quarrel, but also a play on words with ‘guisado’ or stew) and ‘escamado’ (meaning angry, but also used to refer to a scaled fish) are reinforced by the drawing of political cartoons, to great comic effect. A special case, for its importance in electoral ‘cooking’ or scheming and the frequency with which it is used, is the dish of ‘mutton with potatoes’, with which the artist denounced political strategies. Even menus provided an opportunity for criticism, offering an amusing frame to the dishes as well as a harsh view of a draft state budget.

At times it is difficult to separate political from social metaphor, with politicians depicted as servants, maids, cooks or wet nurses… But Bordalo’s social metaphor also takes shape in the denunciation of alimentary excess, be it in the heavily-laden table of a man of the church, or the entrenched vice of alcoholism in Zé Povinho, condoned by the humorous expression ‘catching a turkey’ (meaning to get drunk). Social types are synthesised in costumes for the theatre, paradigmatically in the effeminate ‘peach’ and the ‘supper’ cocotte, with plays like O Reino da Bolha (The Kingdom of the Bubble), 1897, and Formigas e Formigueiros (Ants and Anthills), 1898, worthy of a detailed reading of their deliberate ornamented costumes. Another order of social commentary can be seen in the ridiculed etiquette at cocktail parties, with cups of tea, toast and titbits on sticks, at an elegant society soiree that included members of the royal family.

Menus and the Table

In fact, both cocktail and table service established a refined code of etiquette during this period, as did the rules of behaviour during a meal. Tribute banquets were important moments of conviviality and social representation during the 19th century. Rafael Bordalo not only reported on them, but he also participated as a decorator of interior spaces and tables, or graphically composed menus, as well as often being a guest at the event.

We know of more than a dozen personalised menus created by him, many of them featuring self-portraits. They are the result of official commissions, or rather, requests from friends who would see themselves caricatured affectionately among the oversized cookery and table items. Bordalo’s humour extended to the names of the dishes, most of which were given in French, according to the rules of social correctness (which are also ridiculed), adding another aspect to the humour.

His taste for interior decoration came to the table as well, and he used many ceramic pieces he had produced at Caldas da Rainha, arranged among ornamental plants and flowers, with a 19th-century exuberance, seeking to surprise with the picturesque or exotic effect, as was the fashion.

As well as still lifes in naturalistic ceramic, used to decorate dining rooms, Rafael Bordalo created highly amusing table, coffee and tea services, or dinner services in elegant earthenware; even toothpick holders, caricaturing Viscount of Faria or Marquis de Franco… A singular example is his dinner service and canteen of cutlery for Viscount of S. João da Pesqueira, with a remarkable neo-Manueline design, produced by the Porto jewellers Reis & Filhos (1899-1900).

With all this in mind, we attempt to show the unexpected ‘gastronomic view’ of the work of this important artist who, in giving us an alimentary portrait of Portuguese society at the end of the 19th century, so often in the form of caricature, never forgets to highlight hunger, without losing his sense of humour.