Luis Jiménez Aranda

LUIS JIMÉNEZ ARANDA (Seville, 1845 - Pontoise, France, 1928).
"Female portrait.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower margin.
Measurements: 83 x 63 cm; 99 x 79 cm (frame).
José Jiménez Aranda, brother of Luis and Manuel Jiménez Aranda, was a Spanish painter and illustrator who began his training with Manuel Cabral and Eduardo Cano de la Peña. His talent for drawing helped him to enter the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Santa Isabel de Hungría in Seville in 1851. In 1868 he was in Madrid, where he learned in the Prado Museum of the best masters, feeling special predilection for Goya and Velázquez. In 1867 he was in Jerez de la Frontera working as a restorer and designer of stained glass and, four years later, he managed to go to Rome, where he met Mariano Fortuny. He returned four years later. Between 1881 and 1890 he lived in Paris, making a series of works among which stand out those set in the eighteenth century, with great influence of Fortuny, by the success that brought him. When he returned to Madrid, he dedicated himself to a work with daily themes, but with a more costumbrist air. In 1892 he returned to Seville, where he worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts until his death, teaching in turn to prominent figures such as Eugenio Hermoso, Manuel González Santos, etc., and frequenting the so-called "landscape circle of Alcalá de Guadaira" towards the end of the 19th century. Although his best known work are the scenes inspired by the art of the seventeenth century, he also dealt with religious themes and landscapes. His work received numerous awards during his lifetime (Honorary Mention at the National Fine Arts Exhibitions of 1864 and 1866; First Medal at the 1890, Medal of Honor at the Munich International Exhibition of 1883 ...), and is preserved in important private collections and institutions such as the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga, the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, the Prado Museum in Madrid, etc....