Paper short abstract:

Taking a well-known Portuguese painting as an example, I'll propose a meta-ethnographic approach to talk about nineteenth-century European understandings and uses of ethnography and its relations to the construction of national cultures in the long run.

Paper long abstract:

Quite often we attribute "ethnographic" qualities to picture or a realistic painting coming from former epochs, namely from the nineteenth century. On the other hand, for a contemporary anthropologist it will appear at least ambiguous to say that she is making an "ethnographic" approach of a given painting or picture (although we stick to simple, tacit, definition of ethnography as something touched by the "magic" - Stocking jr. - of our practice). Taking a well-known Portuguese painting as an example, I'll propose a meta-ethnographic approach to talk about nineteenth-century European understandings and uses of ethnography and its relations to the construction of national culture in the long run. I'll maintain that "in-depth" approach to the variety of the history of ethnographic practices is needed if we are to recognize how common national cultures came to be shared and how new possibilities of work for the future can be opened.