Palacete Brandão in a Watercolor of Dream and Tragedy
2024-07-27
A watercolor of Palacete Brandão, in Oliveira de Azeméis. I ended up going to get to know a bit of the city at a meetup put together by the USK Portugal Norte crew, and that’s where I first heard the story behind this old mansion belonging to the Brandão family, built in French style back at the end of 1890.
Back then, it was pretty common for Portuguese people who’d made their fortune in Brazil to come back to Portugal with obscene amounts of money and build these huge houses, packed with luxury and modern comforts that regular Portuguese folks had never even seen, things like hot water or electricity.
The story behind Palacete Brandão
In this particular case, though, things didn’t end well for the Brandão family. Manuel Brandão, the family’s patriarch, made his fortune in Brazil and, once back, wanted to build a house unlike anything else in the whole region. That initial excitement eventually got swallowed up by the ever growing costs of the build, and unable to handle the pressure, he ended it all with a single gunshot. The house sat unfinished for a while, until his widow, Joana Augusta de Castro Brandão, decided to finish what her husband had started.
I find it wild how such a beautiful facade can hold such a heavy story behind it. That contrast, between the dream that gave birth to this house and the tragic end of the man who dreamed it up, is exactly what I tried to capture in this watercolor.