José Alarcón

JOSÉ ALARCÓN SUÁREZ (Madrid, active in the last third of the 19th century).
"Faena brindada".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 90 x 130 cm; 106 x 146 cm (frame).
Three women are presented to the spectator behind a balcony that only allows to see their busts. One of them is waving a handkerchief indicating that they are at a bullfight. The other young women are distracted from the bullfight and are both holding fans, indicating that they are engaged in a game of conquest, very much in keeping with the taste of the time, when the ladies used their fans to flirt and convey messages to their admirers. Specialising in genre painting and portraiture, Alarcón trained as a painter at the San Fernando School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving in Madrid. He submitted works to various competitions and sent works to the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid from 1871. He is represented in the Prado Museum Traditionally, Spanish painting and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries were interested in popular customs and types. Sorrolla himself commented: "I want to give, always within the verism of my school, a representation of Spain; not looking for philosophies, but for the picturesque of each region". This trend spread throughout all the provinces of Spain, Andalusia being the most famous for its representation of popular life. For this reason, this type of work was very common and appreciated in Spanish art from the 19th century until well into the 20th century. In which the creation of popular patterns portrayed through an idyllic vision where the author is influenced by an aesthetic and romantic heritage, developed during the second half of the 19th century and which derived in a localist conception of the landscape, in works that reflected the love for the land itself and the beauty and lyricism of the everyday, the close, the familiar...