19th century Spanish school. "Musketeers in the... Lot 22

19th century Spanish school. "Musketeers in the tavern". Oil on canvas. With apocryphal signature "R. Ribera" in the lower left corner. Measurements: 30 x 50 cm; 44 x 64,5 cm (frame). The portraits and scenes of musketeers were very popular among the Spanish bourgeois clientele of the 19th century, within a context still inherited from romanticism, which looked for in the idealised recreation of the past an escape from the daily reality. Many painters of the period worked along these lines, seeking to depict scenes from the past with the greatest possible verism, recreated with precise attention to detail and worked with an academic language or, as in the case of the present panel, with a clearly modern language that was particularly sensitive to light and atmosphere. Scenes of this type featuring musketeers are part of the genre of casacone painting, scenes painted with a particular narrative and descriptive emphasis, the main formal reference point in Spain being Velázquez and his contemporaries.