As a typical estrangeirado [one who delights in what is foreign] living a troubled love relationship with his homeland, JAF crafted a complex narrative of Portuguese art that highlights the timid and insufficient approaches to Parisian centrality, but also the emergence of a kind of national genius that he celebrated in Domingos Sequeira, Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, and especially Almada Negreiros. When the revolution of 25 April 1974 occurred, JAF was considering becoming a researcher at the prestigious CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), but he accepted the challenge to join the teaching staff of the newly created Universidade Nova de Lisboa,established in 1973. He joined as a Full Professor, dedicating much of his legendary work capacity to building modern Art History education from scratch. By 1992, when he retired at the age of 70, JAF had fulfilled and exceeded his goal: at the FCSH (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences), dozens of master's students in Contemporary Art History were trained, as well as in other periods, since — with the collaboration of Artur Nobre de Gusmão, João Manuel Bairrão Oleiro, and José Eduardo Horta Correia — all the "specialisation areas" were created, marking the identity of Art History at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa,which has remain ed to this day. It was JAF who led this revolution in a hitherto marginali s ed sector, stimulating the dynamics that were later established at the universities of Porto, Coimbra, and the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon, in a fruitful exchange of collaborations. He was a demanding teacher in his classes and in supervising dozens of master's dissertations and doctoral theses,but he never lacked time to research and publish with unbeatable efficiency. After A Arte em Portugal no Século XIX,he began preparing A Arte em Portugal no Século XX [Art in Portugal in the 20th Century] (up to the 1960s), with an identical methodology centred on Lisbon production and printed sources. It was the first time in Portugal that "the decade" had been chosen as a relevant criterion for chronological organisation, adopting international models from art criticism and museology. As he had done with the 19th century, the comprehensive study of cultural contexts focused on key figures: the leading painters, sculptors, and architects, who shared a common desire for modernity. The system he built deepened previous works (by Diogo de Macedo and Carlos Queirós, for example), proposing a line of direction moving from figuration to abstraction and, in general, from Academia to Modernism, in an avant-garde ascension.This was the international view of the time, and therefore, JAF's work, beyond the wealth of suggestions it continues to offer, has earned itself a place in history, demanding a challenging hermeneutic approach from experts. Although it is not possible to list all the research directions, one must mention the monumental Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1981) and the monographs on António Carneiro, Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, José Malhoa, and Almada Negreiros, as well as the constant revisiting of Amadeo de Souza Cardoso and Vieira da Silva, of whom he was the most astute historian. Moreover, there are key texts, with a broad thematic and chronological scope, collected in Cem exposições [One Hundred Exhibitions] (1982), and Quinhentos folhetins [Five Hundred Feuilletons], (2 volumes, 1984-1993). He returned to his studies on Lisbon countless times, up to Lisboa: história física e moral [Lisbon: physical and moral history] (2008), in which he proposes a global history of the city, from its origins to the mid-20th century .

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