Eleni Boukoura Altamoura ΕΛΕΝΗ ΜΠΟΥΚΟΥΡΑ ΑΛΤΑΜΟΥΡΑ
Born 1821 Died 1900
Section One, Number 134
Let me do the weeping.
You just write the reasons
in case I’m still
in debt to sadness.
I want to have
my conscience clear,
that I have been tortured
for everything.
(Kiki Dimoula)
Eleni Boukoura Altamoura, a self-portrait
In the small island of Spetses, famous for its war heroes Bouboulina and Andreas Miaoulis, a heroine of a different sort was born in 1821, the same year as the Greek War of Independence began. Her name was Eleni Boukoura and she became a painter. Her father, Ioannis, an Arvanitis (1) like so many in Spetses, was a member of the Filiki Etairia and a ship master who fought for Greece’s independence.
Ioannis was a man very much ahead of his time when it came to the education of women. He had not learned his letters until adulthood, but he wanted his two daughters and son to receive the best education possible. He moved his family to Nauplio so that the children could study at the French school there and, subsequently, on to Athens so his daughters could attend the Hill School (2) in the Plaka. Getting an education was an uphill battle for talented women during this era and Eleni had talent. Just how far she and her father were willing to go to nurture that talent is an amazing tale of daring, adventure, and ultimately, of tragedy. There is a reason why Eleni’s work is not found in Athens’ wonderful National Galley today...
Eleni’s Youth
Her talent was recognized and encouraged early on. At the Hill School Eleni would set up her own private ‘atelier’ during recess and create portraits of her fellow students. They were her first models. Because higher education was not open to women in those days, Ioannis Boukouras encouraged her development by securing private lessons for her with Italian painter Raffaello Ceccoli.
Raffaello Ceccoli was no run of the mill teacher. An accomplished painter, he had initially come to Greece with his young daughter in 1837 in a vain attempt to find a cure for her tuberculosis. He subsequently became a professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1843 to 1852. His work can be seen today in the National Gallery in Athens:
Ceccoli painted portraits of Greek war heroes and scenes like the above in the romantic vein so popular at the time.
Eleni’s young life was unusual. It was not just her art lessons. There was more. In 1844, her father had bought a theatre in Athens from its Italian owner and became its manager for many decades. The Boukoura Theatre, as he named it, may have been a tad less grand than the theatres of European capitals, but it was Athens’ first major effort to emulate them and it was loved and patronized by Athenians during the many years of its existence. Boukouras never made money on the theatre and, in fact, had sold a sailing ship, the Sea Horse in order to buy it. He was truly an early benefactor to the state. It is amazing that a mere 10 years after war torn Athens had become the capital of Greece, it had established both a thriving school of Fine Arts and a Theatre bringing European culture to its population. The plan to make Athens into the ‘Paris of the south’ was not an idle one.
A sketch of
the theatre when it was on its last legs, but you get the idea. Plateia Theatro on Menandrou Street marks the site where the theatre was.
Eleni must have enjoyed the rehearsals and performances at her father’s theatre. It would have been exciting to watch dramas and operas unfold with actors taking on roles so different from their everyday lives. Perhaps that experience encouraged her to attempt her solo debut in 1848 - with all of Italy for a stage.
The Metamorphosis of Eleni
Her world was a man’s world. She desperately wanted to be accepted as a student at Italian Schools of Fine Arts but they, like the Fine Arts School in Athens, prohibited women from attending. What could be simpler than arriving as a young man in a country where no one knew her real identity and attending academies there, as a young man?
So it happened that, at the age of 27, Eleni travelled to Italy with her father, and became Chrisinis Boukouras, a young man in European dress, fully qualified to study at the art academies of Naples and Rome.
Eleni / Chrisinis Boukouras studied in Rome and at the Overbeck School in Naples as well as in Florence.
What was Eleni’s state of mind during these years of disguise and study? Many have speculated. A gripping novel published in 1998 by Rea Galanaki, Eleni, or Nobody, offers an introspective and somewhat melancholy Eleni/Chrisinis.
"Ελένη ή ο Κανένας, published in 1998 and has been translated into 17 languages
At one point in the novel, Eleni views her persona in a mirror and says: I got used to the figure that looked back at me in the ‘crooked’ mirrors of the Cafe Greco, a shy, monk-like, ugly, timid creature. The author goes on to have Eleni wondering what her punishment will be for breaking all the rules. Would it be exile? This beautifully imagined account may be accurate or, it may be the author foreshadowing what she knows is a tragic dénouement.
There is the other possibility, - that Eleni sometimes revelled in her disguise as she honed her painting skills and entered into the bohemian lifestyle of artists in Italy.
I hope she did.
Certainly a life-long stint as a man was not on her mind. She fell in love with mentor and up and coming painter Franceso Saverio Altamoura, a teacher at the Naples School of Fine Art. He painted in the romantic style of his era, preferring portraits or historical subjects:
His works are still in demand. The above was completed in 1848 when he was still with Eleni
A self portrait of Altamoura in later life
He must have had charm and charisma to have persuaded her to live with him outside of marriage for several years.
.jpg)
A portrait of Eleni painted by Franceso Altamoura
They had two children, Sophia in 1851 and Ioannis in 1852. Then, in 1853 Eleni became a Catholic so they could marry, after which they had a son, Alessandro, born in 1856. Altamoura was not faithful, having affairs, until the one with English painter Jane Benham Hay ended their marriage. This must have been especially painful to Eleni because she and Jane were friends and fellow artists.
This is a painting by Eleni showing herself as Chrisinis painting Jane Benham Hay
Altamoura abandoned Eleni for Hay in 1857 and took their youngest son Alessandro with him. That seems incredible today that he had that legal right.. He went on to a long life and reasonable fame and fortune, as did Hay. They had one son who also became an artist of some note.
In his autobiography, Altamoura would say about Eleni:
She was extremely melancholy, mistrustful of her own opinions and very well educated...She was unhappy when she had to wear feminine clothing.(3)
Well... hardly an impartial source...
At the age of 36, Eleni returned to her parents’ home in the Plaka area of Athens with two of her children. It seems that Eleni was accepted as equal to the artists of the era in spite of (or because of?) her unorthodox past. Along with Nikoforos Lytras she was chosen to show work at the Olympion(4) and presented work along with Georgos Margaritis, Alexandros Rangavis, and Ernst Ziller, distinguished company indeed.
Two of Eleni’s paintings that did survive
She made a living teaching the female students of the Arsakeion School and by teaching privately. Her most well known student was Queen Olga, the wife of George 1 of Greece. In summers, she would take her children to the family home in Spetses.
Her son Ioannis became a student of Greek painter Nikoforos Lytras and, unlike Eleni, was eligible to attend the Athens School of Fine Arts.
Ioannis Altamoura, a self portrait
He was granted a scholarship by King George 1 to study in Copenhagen under Karl Frederick Sorensen, a specialist in marine painting; Ioannis became an expert in the genre. In 1875, while still a student, he presented The Port of Copenhagen, at the Olympion where it was awarded the silver medal.
The Port of Copenhagen
Critics today remark on the vivid light in his work - his bright blues, greens, yellows and greys and that his paintings were moving from academic realism towards impressionism. Eleni may have been just a tiny bit wistful at the ease with which Ioannis had been accepted in the Athenian School of Fine Arts.
Then Eleni was dealt two heavy blows. Her beloved father died and then her daughter Sophia was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a disease that ravaged so many families in Greece during this era. Eleni took Sophia to Spetses for fresh air and isolation, the only cures available at that time, but Sophia died in 1872 at the age of 18.
Eleni did return to Athens and, in 1876, Ioannis opened his own studio on Filellinon Street. He was set to do well. One commission from Patras gained him 22,000 drachmas, a large sum at the time.(5)
.jpg)
Ioannis Altamoura’s Naval Battle of Patras
But tragically, at the age of 26, Ioannis, also died of tuberculosis.
It was too much to bear. Eleni suffered a nervous breakdown during which she took all of the works from her Spetses home and burned them. Subsequently, supported economically by her brother Anastasis, Eleni, became an eccentric recluse in Spetses until her death in 1900.
She was buried on the island along with her son and daughter, and her brother apparently burned all of her accumulated papers and correspondence, the second holocaust in the garden on Spetses.
The family home in Spetses
Her grandchildren later had her bones and those of her two children transferred to Athens where they now rest in the Boukouras family grave.
Section One, Number 134
Eleni and her childrens’ grave stone in the First Cemetery
A Myth in the Making
“Because literature is not the things you find, it’s the way you ferment them” (Rea Galanaki in an interview) (6)
Why did her brother burn all of her papers? Why did she refuse Alessandro, her third child’s invitation, to come to Italy after Ioannis’ death choosing isolation in Spetses instead.(7) Why did Eleni, rather like Keats, come to feel that her name had been ‘writ on water” (8), was her life’s work not worth recording? Was it the death of her two children, born out of wedlock, having been abandoned by her husband, her father’s death? Was she always melancholy? Surely she must have had a great sense of adventure when she was young, before tragedy drove her into seclusion. The poem by Kiki Dimoula at the beginning of this text seems to me to capture the latter part of her life. But she remains a tantalizing mystery. Her story leaves so many questions unanswered...
But one thing is certain: she retains a remarkable place in the history of art in Greece – and did pave the way for women artists to finally be accepted as students in the Athens School of Fine Arts. The first woman to be accepted on equal footing with the men was Sophia Laskaridou in 1903. She had personally petitioned King George 1 and he then decreed it.
I like to think that his wife Olga, who studied under Eleni, had something to do with that.
The Map
Footnotes
(1) Arvanites are Albanian Greeks, many of whom have lived in Greece for hundreds of years. The Saronic islands and some parts of Attica had a large population of Arvanites in the early 19th century. Many spoke Albanian rather than Greek – or both.
(2) For the story of the Hill School, see:
http://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2018/12/fanny-hill.html
(3) Francesco Saverio Altamoura (1822-1897) his life and work by Ioannis Bouroiannis-Tsaggaridis
(4) The Olympion or Zappeian Games were precursors of the 1896 Olympics. As in Ancient Greece, these games held in 1859, 1867, and 1870 included categories for art.
(5) See: https://www.tovima.gr/2011/03/06/culture/pethane-26-xronwn-prolabe-omws-na-damasei-ta-kymata/
(7) Alessandros also had success as a painter showing works in Torino in 1880 and Paris in 1906. He had a nervous breakdown and apparently destroyed many of his father’s works. There is, no doubt, a story there.
(8)Keats’grave:
_-_Foto_Giovanni_Dall'Orto,_31-March-2008.jpg)
See also:
https://amarysia.gr/arthra-sxolia-main/ιωάννης-μπούκουρας-ένας-μπαρουτοκαπ tells the story of Ioannis Boukouras
The original poem by Dimoula, far better than my translation, of course.
"'Ασε να κλαίω
Μόνο γράφε τους λόγους,
μήπως κι οφείλω
κι άλλη λύπη.
Θέλω να έχω
τη συνείδησή μου (conscience)
ήσυχη πως βασανίστηκα
για όλα. "
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