Spanish school; XIX century.

Spanish school; XIX century.
"Allegory".
Oil on canvas.
Presents illegible signature.
Measurements: 29,5 x 22 cm; 32,5 x 25 cm (frame).
The artist introduces us with this work in the workshop of a painter. The artist appears before the spectator behind his work, of which we can appreciate nothing more than the stretcher frame and the back of the canvas. Sitting in a calm and relaxed manner, the artist has interrupted his artistic work and turns his face towards a skeleton that rests one of its bony hands on the protagonist's shoulder, alluding to the transience of life.
During the 19th century, the proliferation of portraits capturing artists' studios reflected a renewed interest in the creative space as an intimate and revealing universe. At a time marked by the rise of Romanticism and Realism, studios became scenarios charged with symbolism, where the personality of the creator and the artistic act took center stage. Painters such as Gustave Courbet or Édouard Manet portrayed these spaces as an extension of the artist's identity, showing brushes, easels and works in progress as mute witnesses of the creative struggle. This trend also responded to a public increasingly fascinated by artistic genius and its environment, feeding a curiosity for what was happening "behind the canvas," a desire to understand art through the atmosphere in which it was born.