Estudo para o autorretrato Santo António, s.d.
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Courtesy of José Caiado de Sousa

She has lived in Porto since he was three years old. She enrolled with his sister Sofia de Sousa at the Porto Academy of Fine Arts (1893 – 96), but since she was 16 he had drawing and painting lessons with António Costa Lima. She leaves for Paris with the financial support of his older sister, where she stays for about three years (1899 – 1902) and attends the courses of J.P. Laurens and B. Constant of the Académie Julien. She completed his training on the route he took through European museums and galleries, on trips made before his return to Portugal, through Brittany (1899) and in 1902, through Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Rome, Florence, Venice, Madrid and Seville. During this period, around 1900, she painted Self-portrait with a red coat, a significant work of his production and of the Portuguese artistic panorama due to the expressive sobriety and modernity of his proposals. Collaborates as an illustrator for periodicals and publications from 1899 to 1905. She participated in the Fine Arts exhibitions at the Ateneu Comercial do Porto, from 1893 to 1895, exhibited regularly at the Misericórdia gallery and was a regular at the annual exhibitions of the Sociedade de Belas-Artes do Porto, since 1909, despite her independent character refusing the invitation to the Presidency of this Institution, in 1907, and to resign from the status of member, in 1921, a year before her death, due to the lack of an exhibition room.