José, Joaquín, Valeriano and Gustavo Adolfo: the Bécquers who painted nineteenth century Spain | Culture | EUROtoday

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer all the time drew. In addition to writing poetry, prose, tales and journalistic chronicles, the Sevillian writer, an icon of Romanticism for his Rhymes and legendsone of the vital widespread books in Spanish literature, he drew on free sheets and on letters, and he scribbled skillfully in notebooks and albums. Even in his personal manuscripts. It appeared so pure to him that he generously gave away these drawings, a lot of which got here spontaneously from his pen, amongst his mates and acquaintances.

He was a powerful draftsman, additionally gifted in music, as was additionally his older brother, Valeriano, and as his father José and his uncle Joaquín had been a technology earlier than, all of them members of a pictorial dynasty that documented nineteenth century Spain like few others, in the course of the reign of Isabel II and the institution in Seville of the highly effective Antonio de Orleáns, Duke of Montpensier, who rivaled the Spanish monarch to such an extent that the Andalusian metropolis was recognized in these days. years just like the Small Court.

That Seville in full social and concrete transformation, vibrant and cosmopolitan because the duke insisted on enterprise; in addition to this household with a classy Central European surname and essential significance within the cultural lifetime of the town and the nation, middle The Bécquers, a lineage of artistsone of many nice exhibitions of the season on the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, which brings collectively till March 15 greater than 150 items—oil work, drawings, watercolors, lithographs and books—by these 4 members of the Bécquer household, true pioneers of costumbrista portray.

“Until that time, the most important painting had basically been religious painting. But after the French invasion, the Confiscation of Mendizábal, the convents and the painters had practically fallen into ruin. So, this José Bécquer, and some other artists but above all José, found in foreign travelers a way to make a living,” explains the curator of the exhibition and one of many essential collectors of the household’s work, Manuel Piñanes. The specialist refers back to the conventional scenes that documented the favored lifetime of a metropolis like Seville, which in these years flourished as a extremely appreciated vacation spot—for its typicality and exoticism—amongst European intellectuals. “The taste of Spanish was a fashion and he represented it with a very high artistic quality,” says Piñanes.

Indeed, the initiator of the saga was José Domínguez Insausti, father of Valeriano and Gustavo Adolfo, and the one who adopted his father’s now well-known second surname. “Some members of the Bécquer family were from the city of Brabant (Flanders), who had settled in Seville at the end of the 16th century,” explains the curator. Along with watercolors of precision and charming coloration, the curator highlights José for his contribution to a method that was new on the time, lithography: “We are talking about 1830 and the really beginnings of lithography, which is the most curious part of José Bécquer’s work, which no other painter has, certainly not his relatives, nor other Spanish artists, such as the reproduction of his work, which was then done by foreign lithographers.”

And that gave him nice fame, though very short-lived as a result of he died younger, like his son Gustavo Adolfo who died on the age of 34, the evil par excellence of romantic artists. The longest and most well-known was, indisputably, the uncle Joaquín, along with being a superb painter, was a key man within the lifetime of the town, all the time realizing how one can navigate between two waters, with wonderful relations with each Queen Elizabeth II and her intimate enemiesthe dukes of Montpensier. “In Seville he was a very important painter, he had a lot of positions, curator of the Alcázar, painter of the duke’s chambers…”, certifies the curator. His work, in any case, are monumental, with lovely representations of monuments, on a regular basis scenes, others purely courtly and royal portraits and a ardour: the sky of Seville.

Joaquín was additionally, in the long run, the instructor of the brothers Valeriano and Gustavo Adolfo, orphans since they had been kids. “Gustavo was a magnificent draftsman, but he gave up painting early, he wasn’t that interested. He had entered school when he was 12, but he abandoned his studies because they seemed routine to him,” says Piñanes. From there he then went to his uncle Joaquín’s studio, the place he shared lessons with Valeriano, writer of one of many star items of the exhibition: the well-known portrait he made from his brother Gustavo Adolfo throughout his time in Madrid, an iconic portray of Spanish Romanticism, crossed by the poet’s melancholy and sensitivity.

“All his life he had a close relationship with his brother Gustavo. They left Seville to move to Madrid and from there they traveled to Veruela and toured Castile. Even in 1865 he received an annual pension to travel around Spain studying national customs and costumes,” says the commissioner. But once more, the household sample was repeated: he died in Madrid on the age of 37.

“All of them form a kind of evolution as if it were a single painter, and if so, this exhibition could even be coherent,” says Manuel Piñanes, “like three stages in the life of a single painter.” Perhaps it is going to be due to this transient life that Becquerian existences went via, completely symbolized within the closing part of the exhibition, the place a primary version of the Rhymes and Legends by Gustavo Adolfo, which solely noticed the sunshine of day posthumously in 1871—the poet had died a 12 months earlier than—on the initiative of his mates, who needed to make a preferred subscription to have the ability to publish them.