Portuguese in 1882, dates from this time. His finances were tight again, he went hungry and had to make drawings and portraits in cafes to survive. Receiving a gold medal at the Imperial Academy for the painting A Carioca, a nude refused by emperor Pedro, to whom it had been offered. Americo asked a friend in Rio de Janeiro to sell the prize, with whose money he could support himself for a while longer. In 1868, he defended the thesis Science and Systems: Questions of Natural History and Philosophy at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Brussels, obtaining the degree of Doctor of Natural Sciences, approved with merit and appointed in January of the following year as an adjunct professor. The approval was reported in several Brazilian and Belgian newspapers in extremely laudatory terms, assuming the character of a scientific event, and according to his first biographer, he was awarded the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, granted by Pope Pius IX. The paintings São Marcos, Visão de São Paulo and Cabeça de São Jerônimo date from this period. At the same time, the Brazilian government pressured him to return and take up his professorship at the Imperial Academy. Return to Brazil and fame Relenting to the government's requests, Américo returned to Brazil in 1869, first passing through Portugal, where at the end of the year he married Carlota de Araújo Porto-Alegre (1844–1918), daughter of Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, then Brazilian consul in Lisbon. With her he would later have three children. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1870s and began to dedicate himself to painting mythological and historical canvases and portraits. At the Imperial Academy he taught archeology, art history and aesthetics. He also wrote, directed the numismatics and archeology sections of the Imperial and National Museum, and made caricatures for the periodical A Comédia Social. But when he returned from Europe, he was still an unknown painter to Brazilians. A teaching career did not offer many prospects for fame and fortune, the Brazilian art market was still incipient, and it appears that he had a difficult, proud and self-sufficient personality, which earned him several disaffections. However, taking advantage of the wave of patriotism unleashed by the Brazilian victory in the Paraguayan War, and encouraged by the emperor, he painted the canvas Batalha do Campo Grande, a large-scale composition in which he sought to praise