Modesto Brocos

MODESTO BROCOS Y GÓMEZ (Santiago de Compostela, 1852 - Rio de Janeiro, 1936).
"Rosalía de Castro", Catoira, 1870.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and titled on the back.
Measurements: 75 x 60,5 cm; 89 x 75 cm (frame).

In Catoira, Pontevedra, is located the pazo of Lestrove, place where Rosalía De Castro spent her summers and where the painter Modesto Brocos spent his summers. The one we now present is an early portrait of Rosalía De Castro.

A painter of portraits, landscapes and genre subjects, engraver, draftsman and writer, Modesto Brocos was a Galician artist active in Brazil, or a Brazilian artist born in Galicia (he obtained Brazilian nationality). He began his training at the Academy of Fine Arts of La Coruña, in Santiago, where he was taught by his brother Isidoro, sculptor and engraver, who would later become Pablo Picasso's teacher. He also studied with the miniaturist Cancela del Río. Before he was twenty years old, he began his first trip to South America, arriving in Buenos Aires in 1871. In the Buenos Aires capital he worked as an illustrator in "Los Anales de la Agricultura de la República Argentina", a publication edited under the patronage of Domingo F. Sarmiento. He opened a drawing and engraving workshop in 1872, but two years later, around 1874-75, he moved to Brazil, specifically to Rio de Janeiro. There he studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Vítor Meireles and Zeferino da Costa. He will also collaborate with the publication "O Mequetrefe". In fact, Brocos will popularize in Brazil the woodcut technique, almost unknown until then, which he used to make his illustrations. With a restless character, he only remained in Brazil for two years, returning to Europe and settling first in Paris, where he entered the School of Fine Arts and was taught by the German Henri Lehmann. Dissatisfied with the teaching system of the institution, he left shortly after and went to Madrid. From the Spanish capital he left again for France and from there to Rome, on a scholarship from the Diputación de La Coruña. There he studied at the Academia Chigi, and came into contact with Francisco Pradilla, who would be his protector and teacher during his four-year stay in the Italian capital. By this time Brocos is already a mature artist, author of excellent works and a frequent participant in the Paris Salon. In 1890, leaving aside his professorship in the Economic Society of Santiago, he returned to American lands, settling again in Rio. There he obtained a teaching position at the National School of Fine Arts, of which he eventually became director, and played an important role as a painter and treatise writer. He published writings on art theory, and produced countless etching portraits, as well as paintings of Brazilian customs and historical themes. However, despite being based in America, he maintained ties with his native Spain, participating in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts (he was awarded an Honorary Mention in 1897), and even publishing writings, among which stands out his only work of fiction, "Viaje a Marte", published in Valencia in 1930, in which he constructs an authentic socialist utopia. In 1952 an anthological exhibition of his work was organized in Rio, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. He is currently represented in the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, which in 2007 dedicated an important anthological exhibition to him, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museum of Fine Arts of La Coruña, the Caixa Galicia Foundation, etc.