Tomás da Anunciação

Principally an animal painter, he was considered the best artist in that branch of art in the Iberian Peninsula; but he occasionally executed genre pictures.

While still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was accepted in 1837 and later quit for a brief period in protest over the academic teaching method, the artist acquired an interest in landscape painting.

Anunciaço, together with a group of young students, rebelled and stood up to the teachers in a nonviolent revolution of techniques and practices, probably because he was the oldest among them.

Painting 'from nature', recording landscape elements and discovering distinctive regional characteristics and local traditions was crucial, a notion influenced by Almeida Garrett's 1846 book Viagens na minha terra [Travels in My Homeland].

To answer these problems, "The Crossing Borders Project", an interdisciplinary study that includes modern sources as well as art historical and scientific examination, began research on this period in Portugal.

The importance he placed on drawing as a preparatory study for painting – the detailed representation of reality on paper – was decisive in his work, and it was a fundamental element learned in his introductory classes in architecture at the Arsenal's Sala do Risco and in draughtsman ship at the Natural History Museum.

Beginning as a defiant Academy student, Anunciaço went on to advocate for the painting of landscapes, customs, and animals, and was regarded as the leader of the new romantic generation, which included Francisco Metrass, Joo Cristino da Silva, José Rodrigues, and Victor Bastos, and was drawn to painting 'd'après nature', such as in the case of Na eira [On the Sea].

Tomás da Anunciaço's work has been auctioned several times, with realized prices ranging from $319 to $8,535 USD depending on the size and medium of the piece.

Plein-air painting, as Ann Hoeningswald points out, necessitated a high level of speed in order to capture the moment and the changing quality of light.