Emília dos Santos Braga
1867–1949 · Portuguese painter, pupil of José Malhoa
Emília dos Santos Braga (Lisbon, 1867-1949) was a Portuguese painter associated with the naturalist style of the Malhoa school. She matters because she built a professional career at a time when women were denied academic training and were usually regarded as mere amateurs.
Born in Lisbon into a liberal family, she was encouraged to paint and to study music. The Academia Nacional de Belas Artes did not admit women until 1896, and her parents could not afford Paris, so she first took private lessons and then, dissatisfied with her first teacher, chose José Malhoa, whom she studied under from 1888. In 1893 she began exhibiting and received a third-class medal, unusual for a beginner.
Her work gained recognition in Portuguese and international shows, including the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900. She painted many female nudes, whose reception in 1909 brought negative criticism that led her to stop exhibiting with the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes. From 1904 she taught art to upper-class women in Lisbon, among them Mily Possoz and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who gained international reputations.