Eduardo Rosales Circle, second half of the 19th century.

Spanish historicist school, second half of the 19th century. Circle of EDUARDO ROSALES (Madrid, 1836 - 1873).
"Marriage".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 40 x 60 cm; 47 x 66 cm (frame) In this piece we are given a historicist scene in which a marriage is represented. It is unknown what is really the object of this scene, but we know that it has a treatment clearly belonging to the Circle of the painter Eduardo Rosales. Born into a humble family, Eduardo Rosales was trained in the Nazarenism that then dominated the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he entered in 1851 and was a student of Federico de Madrazo. Thanks to friends and colleagues, among whom were the painters Palmaroli and Álvarez Catalá, Rosales traveled to Italy by his own means in 1857, in their company. During the trip he visited Bordeaux and Nimes, where he was impressed by the historical paintings of Léon Cogniet and Paul Delaroche. In Rome he survived with difficulty until he finally obtained a government pension in 1860, which allowed him to produce his first important works. After his first great triumph at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1864, he remained for some time in Madrid, where he painted several portraits, both family and commissioned. In 1865 he went to Paris with Martín Rico and Raimundo de Madrazo, and returned there two years later. However, these years of his life were spent mainly in Rome, where he carried out an intense work before returning to Spain in 1868, following his marriage. During this period he received important aristocratic, religious and governmental commissions, although he was also interested in types and landscapes during his stays in Panticosa and Murcia. At the end of his life, after a controversial success in the National of 1871, he was proposed as the first director of the newly founded Academy of Spain in Rome in 1873, a position he did not occupy because of his death. Capital figure of the Spanish painting of the nineteenth century, from his early works is recognized a personal style that tends to a historicist monumentality, but at the same time synthetic, still cold ranges, in the orbit of romantic purism. His mature style is forged through a personal interpretation of the pictorial myths of his time, within an international academicism although dominated by Velázquez, until reaching a completely modern plastic autonomy. Although he worked on portraits, religious painting, popular types, etc., his artistic career was strongly determined by his successes in official national and international exhibitions in history painting. Thus, in the National of 1864 he obtained the first medal for "Doña Isabel la Católica dictating his will", one of the summits of the genre in Spain, a canvas that was also awarded in the Universal of Paris in 1867, where he was awarded the Legion of Honor. He won the same award again in 1871 for "Muerte de Lucrecia" (Death of Lucrecia), a bold work of unconnected brushstrokes and vibrant workmanship. Rosales is widely represented in the Prado Museum, as well as in other important art galleries and in important private collections.