Enrique Simonet

ENRIQUE SIMONET Y LOMBARDO (Valencia, 1863 - Madrid, 1927).
Untitled.
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 34 x 29 cm; 38 x 33 cm (frame).

In this work the painter works on a drawing displaying a very worked chromatism, full of nuances, applied with a brushstroke of precious influence that is superimposed on the rigidity of the drawing. The subject is one of the classics of the traditional orientalist painting of the 19th century, the beautiful odalisque of clear skin and classic beauty, more a captive Christian princess than an Arab woman, the consummation of the European bourgeois fantasy.

Simonet began his training at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia, and continued in Malaga, in the workshop of Bernardo Ferrándiz. In 1887 he went to Rome, making a trip throughout Italy. In the Italian capital his apprenticeship was completely conditioned by the prevailing classicism of the time, as can be seen in his work "The decapitation of St. Peter", which would occupy a preferential place in the cathedral of Malaga. He visited Paris several times, and in 1890 he toured the Mediterranean. In 1892 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition in Madrid, with the work that was his first success, "Flevit super illam", painted in Rome. He also won awards at the Universal Exposition of Chicago (1894), Barcelona (1896) and Paris (1900). Between 1893 and 1894 he traveled to Morocco as a correspondent for "La Ilustración Española y Americana", and in 1901 he obtained a chair at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where he settled. In 1911 he moved to the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, also as a professor, and between 1921 and 1922 he was director of the El Paular Residence for landscape painters. He is represented in the Prado Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts of Malaga and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.