TREASURES OF AL ANDALUS, OLD MASTERS, FINE ART AND ANTIQUES
Lot 113:
Oil on canvas. With a certificate issued by Don Ramón Triadó as a “possible preparatory version” of the work “La Campana de Huesca” currently preserved in the Huesca town hall. Canvas measures: 300 X 200 cm. José María Casado del Alisal (Villada, Palencia, March 24, 1832 – Madrid, October 8, 1886) was a Spanish painter. He was the brother of the Spanish-Argentine businessman Carlos Casado del Alisal. He was trained at the Municipal Drawing School of Palencia, created in 1838, like Dióscoro Teófilo Puebla Tolín, Serafín Martínez del Rincón y Trives, Eugenio Oliva Rodrigo, Juan María de Velasco and Asterio Mañanós Martínez, among others, and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where he studied under the direction of Federico Madrazo. In 1855 he gets, for his painting Resurrection of Lazarus, a scholarship to go to Rome, where he met Antonio Gisbert and Dioscoro Puebla, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. He resided in Naples, Milan and Venice. Extended his pension, he continued his training in Paris from 1861, where he painted the canvas El juramento de las Cortes de Cádiz, a work that he presented at the 1862 exhibition and which is hung in the hemicycle of the Congress of the Deputies of Spain. He obtained a first-class medal at the national exhibition of 1860, with his painting Last Moments of Fernando IV el Emplazado, sent from Italy in 1856, and repeated a medal of the same class at the National Exhibition of 1864 with his canvas The Surrender of Bailén, a commemorative painting of the capitulation of the French army on July 22, 1808, before the Spanish troops. He was the first director of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, officially opened in January 1881, and a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. At the National Exhibition of 1881 he presented the painting The Huesca Bell or The Legend of the Monk King, inspired by the homonymous legend. He did not get any medal, and receiving only honorable mention, he tendered his resignation as director of the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In May 1882, he is named a member of the jury to award the Landscape pension for Rome on behalf of the Ministry of State, and in October 1883, he is again a member of the jury for the Painting pension in Rome. He especially cultivated historicist themes. Thus, numerous portraits of the high society of the time are owed to him, such as Baldomero Espartero, Isabel II of Spain, Alfonso XII of Spain and Emilio Castelar y Ripoll. But, above all, He is a representative painter of a pictorial tendency that dominates the second half of the 19th century: the painting of great events in relation to the history of each country. It is “history painting” or “retrospective realism” to the extent that he tries to realistically recreate events that occurred in the historical past. In addition, he made some genre paintings, which are preserved in the Prado Museum, such as Portrait of a French lady, Woman with a white mantilla and Lady with a fan, among others. His style follows the romantic ideals of the XIX. Reference bibliography: Ferrandis Poblaciones, José Antonio (2011). «The bell of Huesca, reality or legend?». Aragonese: Journal of the Aragonese Center of Valencia (Valencia: Aragonese Center of Valencia) (60): 19-21. ISSN 2174-9078. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013.
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