Description
The map is part of a genre of allegorical satirical war maps popularized in 1870 when the French caricaturist Paul Hadol published his Comic Map of Europe, which similarly satirized the Franco-Prussian War by depicting the countries as animals and allegorical caricatured humans. Hadol’s map was published in Paris, but spawned Dutch, German, and British versions.
António Soares was a Portuguese painter, caricaturist, architect, decorator, and set designer. Born in Lisbon, he began his career as an illustrator for books, posters, and magazines, including Ilustração, Magazine Bertrand and ABC. As a young man in his early twenties, he produced Mappa Humoristico da Europa, a satirical allegorical map depicting European countries during World War I as animals, which was popular enough to be republished during the war in a second edition. He later updated the map at the beginning of World War II in 1939. In the 1920s, Soares began receiving notice on the Portuguese art scene as a modernist painter of portraits and landscapes, winning a prize in 1929 at the salon of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes for his portrait Natacha, which is now in the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. He also won the Grand Prix at the Paris International Exposition in 1937, and received the Columbano Prize twice, in the Salon of the Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional exhibitions of 1935 and 1948. In 1958 he was honored with the rank of officer of the Ordem Militar de Sant’Iago da Espada, and in 1962 received the Diário de Notícias Prize.
Full publication information, lower right: “A Editora L’da” — Lisboa. 2’a Ediçao. Registada nos Termos da Lei. [The Publishing House, Limited — Lisbon. 2nd Edition. Registered pursuant to law.]
Condition: Generally very good. Recently professionally cleaned and deacidified, and backed on Japanese tissue, with some minor remaining toning, soft creases, wear, occasional small stray marks and pale discoloration patches.
References:
“1939 Portuguese and Chinese Manuscript Satirical Map of Europe in 1939 (WWII).” Geographicus. 2019. https://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/MapaHumoristicoDaEuropa-soares-1939 (23 August 2019).
“Comic Map of Europe.” George Glazer Gallery. 29 June 2006. http://www.georgeglazer.com/archives/maps/archive-europe/comicmapeurope.html (23 August 2019).
“Humorous Map of Europe.” World Digital Library. 14 November 2017. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/18967/ (23 August 2019).
Silveira, André. “António Soares.” Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. May 2010. https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/works_cam/natacha-139019/ (23 August 2019).
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