Read "Journey to Portugal" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When the traveller awoke the day had scarcely dawned, and he observed that it was not only the river's murmur which had disturbed him. It was pouring and raindrops were rushing in cataracts down the verandah's window panes. Already used to travelling in all weathers, the traveller shrugged his shoulders under the sheets and returned to sleep without a care. It was the best of choices. When he rose, the morning was already well advanced and the sky was clear, with the sun sending miniature rainbows through the raindrops clinging to the leaves. It was a real treat. The traveller was appalled at the mere prospect of the heat in high summertime.
His first port of call was at the Albano Sardoeira Museum, where there are some pieces of archaeological interest, certain sixteenth-century paintings worthy of attention but, in addition to this and all the rest, there are the works by Amadeo, proud canvases of the period between 1909 and 1918, demonstrating his skill with every last brushstroke as though the artist, his work completed, immediately set off at full speed for his house at Manhufe where the grape harvest awaited him. The Museum is also endowed with some works by Elói, Dacosta, and Cargaleiro, but it's Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso who captures all the traveller's attention, his prodigious material and luxuriant style of painting so stand out from the Orientalism and Mediaevalism of the drawings that the traveller humbly went and bought in diminutive reproductions.