Eugenio Oliva y Rodrigo

EUGENIO OLIVA Y RODRIGO (Palencia, 1852 - Villaconejos, Madrid, 1925). "Seville Fair". Oil on panel. Signed in the lower left corner. Measurements: 39,50 x 55,50 cm, 67 x 83 cm (frame). Eugenio Oliva and his brother José began their artistic training at the Municipal School of Drawing in Palencia under the tutelage of Justo María de Velasco, although they later moved to Madrid, where he probably arrived in 1873 to study at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving and to attend the workshop of Germán Hernández Amores. The works he submitted to the national exhibitions of 1876 and 1878 did not achieve the desired results, but that same year competitive examinations were held to fill a post as a pensioner for the discipline of "History Painting" at the Special School of Fine Arts in Rome, for which he had to complete a first exercise with the theme Moses taken from the Nile and a third and fourth with The Death of Abel. He finally won the second medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1884. On returning to Madrid, his professional beginnings were complicated, despite his success at the National Exhibition, and he spent some time without work, making copies of the great masters Ribera, Velázquez and Murillo in the Prado Museum, with a self-taught intention. The negative trend did not change until Casto Plasencia commissioned him in 1885 to decorate the chapel of Carlos III with the theme La promulgación del Dogma de la Inmaculada Concepción ("The promulgation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception"). The prestige of working for San Francisco el Grande opened the door to other commissions and consolidated his artistic recognition in Spain.