Daniel Hernandez

DANIEL HERNANDEZ (Salcabamba Peru, 1856 - Lima, 1932)
Untitled.
Oil on canvas.
It has slight flaws and faults.
Signed.
Measurements: 27 x 22 cm; 45 x 41 cm (frame).
Peruvian painter who was born in the region of Huancavelica in Salcabamba on August 1, 1856. Son of the Spanish Leocadio Hernandez and the Peruvian Basilia Morillo, his parents moved to Lima when he was 4 years old, Hernandez, was precocious in his artistic education, beginning at the age of 14 in the workshop of Leonardo Barbieri. The Italian was a great promoter of the arts in Lima, organizing the first "National Painting Exhibition" with a large group exhibition of Peruvian art in 1861. After the failure of the national exhibitions, Barbieri returned to his homeland and it was then when our painter became a teacher at the aforementioned school. Around 1872 he painted the work The Death of Socrates -currently located in the Central Reserve Bank of Peru- which earned him a scholarship to Europe. He arrived in Paris in 1873 where, after some time, his compatriot Ignacio Merino advised him to move to Rome. In the Eternal City he remained for more than eleven years working and learning with Spanish masters such as Mariano Fortuny and Lorenzo Vallés, and in 1883 he returned to Paris, where he was elected President of the Society of Spanish Painters residing in the city of Luz. There he met Spanish artists, and became great friends with Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz and José Villegas y Cordero, both of whom also lived in the French capital during that period. In addition, he became a member of the Society of French Artists, which allowed him to exhibit at the Annual Artists' Salon for seven years. In Spain, it is worth mentioning his participation in the Exhibitions held in Barcelona between 1891 and 1894, being awarded in both, as well as in the International Exhibition of Madrid in 1892, where he presented four works, obtaining the third Medal for his Portrait of Miss R.C. In any case, Daniel Hernandez will remain in Paris -the international capital of art- for more than twenty years, consolidating himself as a painter of genre, portraits and female nudes. It is worth mentioning his participation in the 1899 Salon, where he was awarded the second medal for his painting La Perezosa. The following year, at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900, he was awarded the Gold Medal for his painting Amor Cruel (Cruel Love). In 1912 he travels to Argentina and Uruguay to exhibit his works, returns to Rome for an exhibition, then returns to Paris, where he will reside until 1918. In 1918 his younger brother becomes one of the most valued preachers of the Dominican Order in Peru, at the same time the President of the country, D. José Pardo, calls him to come to Peru for an exhibition. Daniel Hernandez is considered an academicist, perhaps because of his important role as a worldly portraitist of the bourgeoisie; maintaining a careful harmony both formal and chromatic, as well as a clear aestheticist idealization. However, despite this more conservative tendency, the modernity of the Paris of the Belle Epoque also emerges in his work, especially in his rapid and energetic brushwork, reminiscent of the impressionists with whom Hernández may have had a relationship during his long stay in Paris.