ABSTRACT
Adriano de Sousa Lopes had found, the journalist added, 'a drama which satisfies the retina and makes it vibrate in paroxysms of pain, blood, tragedy and suffering'. The site is the Military Museum of Lisbon, with its two Great War Rooms decorated by monumental oil paintings by Sousa Lopes, depicting battle scenes in Flanders, in the Atlantic Ocean and one presenting the nation's post-war mourning. Sousa Lopes's war paintings, however, intend precisely to restate the relevance of the European tradition of battle scenes. Trained as a history painter in Lisbon and later in Paris at the Ecole Nationale et Speciale des Beaux-Arts, in Fernand Cormon's studio, Sousa Lopes was in pre-war years a regular exhibitor at the salon of the Societe des Artistes Francais. Following Germany's declaration of war on Portugal on 9 March 1916, Sousa Lopes proposed to join the Corpo Expedicionario Portugues on the Western Front in France.
