Such was the condition of painting in Spain when there appeared the fruitful and extraordinarily popular genre of historical painting. In its origin it was not Spanish but was introduced from other countries, especially from France; but its Spanish affinities are manifest in its examples, most of which are canvases of great size, imposing, dramatic, and, in general, effective.
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In this period culture, which in Spain had formerly been the preserve of a limited class, now spread itself more widely, and in the sphere of art was greatly fostered by exhibitions of painting, open to all and sundry, without distinction of social status. Pictures and sculpture, which in other times had been dedicated solely to art and to religious piety, the possessions of kings and grandees, now came into public view, were alluded to in publications of all kinds, and the people, enthusiastic and critical, were brought face to face with their native art. Many artists, perceiving this, hoped to gain popular applause, and consequently worked upon their subjects as seemed most agreeable to the masses. The historical picture in such circumstances seemed to offer the greatest possibilities for achieving a popular reputation.
Gisbert painted the popular heroes of the past and was regarded as the representative of those revolutionary tendencies in art which were to triumph several years later. Alisal, Mercade, Palmaroli, Luis Alvarez, careful and excellent artists, painted both historical and genre pictures. From this group arose a most remarkable figure who died whilst still very young, but who has left us a most striking example of his workmanship. This was Eduardo Rosales, the painter of The Death of Isabel the Catholic. Rosales represented the Spanish tradition in painting. Averse to foreign influences, he studied and found in the great masters the sources of his art, and his works, both in Spain and beyond it, excited the greatest interest in his time. The picture above mentioned, sober and simple in style, though it must be classed as genre painting, has still many admirable and enduring qualities. The pity is that this group of artists did not follow him; for, flattered by the public acclamation, they entered upon the second period of historical painting, less effective than the first and always conventional, which lasted many years, indeed almost to the present time. For an atmosphere inimical to the traditions of Spanish painting arose, in which this type of historical composition flourished at a time when it had been condemned and forgotten in other countries, where it was forced to give place to those tendencies in which modern painting had its origin.
Rigurosamente, a contemporary of Rosales, was another exceptional artist of unusual gifts, likewise Mariano Fortuny, who unfortunately died in his youth. Fortuny, though he may appear quite otherwise to-day, was in his own time considered a progressive innovator. When he visited Madrid for the first time, drawn thither by youthful enthusiasm, he did so with no other idea than that of copying from Velázquez. But seeing in the Prado Museum the works of Goya, which were totally new to him, he received a revelation. He copied from Goya, and later, going to Africa, he painted many studies and pictures replete with light. Light as a pictorial factor, as an element in a picture, the study of light, the reflection of it in his own works—that is the progressive element which we find in Fortuny. The rapid success of his first works, their triumph in Paris and Rome, was due to an agreeable style, gracious in touch, suggestive, which appealed to collectors and dealers. At the same time we do not believe this to have been altogether his ideal, since a few years before his death, which took place in his thirty-seventh year, we see him betaking himself to the shores of Italy, where he made new studies of light and air. Was it reserved to Fortuny to be one of those of whom it will be said that he assisted the development of the study of atmosphere and light? We firmly believe this to be so, but the work of the critic has nothing to do with prophecy, and we must deal only with that which Fortuny has left us, which is indeed sufficient. It must not be forgotten in judging his work to-day that its defects, or what seem to be its defects, were those of his time and were not personal, and that what is personal to him was his good taste, his mastery, and a series of innovations and bold essays in colour obvious to those who study his works. Fortuny was not a Spanish painter in the sense that he did not preserve the traditions of our School. He certainly took the elements of his palette from Goya, but his traits of manner show no sign of the typical qualities of Spanish painting.
It is fitting to allude here to artists of different types and talents in some of the cities of Spain, and others living abroad, who laboured during the last years of the nineteenth century—the Madrazos, Raimundo and Ricardo, sons of Don Federico de Madrazo, who studied under the direction of Fortuny; Plasencia, Domínguez and Ferrán, who distinguished themselves in work of a decorative character in the Church of Saint Francisca the Great in Madrid; Pradilla and Villegas, who have obtained the greatest triumphs during a long career; the brothers Mélida, Enrique and Arturo, the first working in Paris for many years, and the second a famous decorative artist; Egusquiza, painter and engraver; Moreno Carbonero, who, more a historical and portrait painter, found a popularity for his pictures inspired by episodes in literature, especially those of Quixote, in which he has coincided with Jiménez Aranda. We may also mention a group of artists, all of Valencia, a city which in times past, as in the present, enjoyed notable artistic prosperity: Sala, Muñoz Degrain, Pinazo Camarlench, José Benlliure and many others. Nearly all of them were represented at the Exhibition at Burlington House in the Salon set apart for the painters of this epoch.
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In the second half of the nineteenth century the study of nature in the form of landscape arose as a creed, the artist coming face to face with the scene which he desired to transfer to his canvas. It has been said “what the landscape is, so is he who praises it.” Until then the landscape had been nothing but a background for a composition or figure, and those who called themselves landscape painters, when they undertook to paint a scene used it as a peg on which to hang poetical ideas, embellishing it, but never treating it as a true rendering of nature. Now the artist came to the country, felt the influence of nature, and faithfully copied it. The object of his work was to be as natural as possible, without embellishing or poetizing his subject, but to portray it, as one might say. This was a new idea to the painters of the time.
Pérez Villamil, a follower of romanticism in painting, also practised landscape art in Spain until it underwent the change mentioned above through the arrival of a Belgian, Charles de Haes, who succeeded Pérez Villamil as professor of landscape at the School of Painting. Haes broke with tradition. He would have no conventionalisms, no studied compositions, nor preconceptions. He took his pupils to the country and there told them to copy Nature herself, leaving them without any further inspiration than that with which God had endowed them. To-day the studies of this master and of his disciples, generally executed in strong contrasts of light, seeking, doubtless, the effectiveness thus produced, appear to us, although they have a sense of luminosity, poor in colour, obscure and hard. But what progress is represented in them in comparison with all former art! And it is clear that they express the tendency which, modern in that time, everywhere governed the advance of art.
Shortly afterwards a Spanish landscape painter, not a disciple of Haes, Martín Rico, a companion of Fortuny, but who, having lived longer than he and reached a more mature age, advanced a further step in the art of landscape painting. If the chief aim of this painter had not been the rapid translation of his gifts into money, and had he not striven to please the public, he might have achieved lasting fame.