PABLO ANTONIO DE BEJAR NOVELLA (Barcelona, 1869... Lot 21

PABLO ANTONIO DE BEJAR NOVELLA (Barcelona, 1869 - London, 1920) "Portrait of a Lady, 1907. Pastel. Slight damage to the period frame. Signed and dated in the lower left corner. Measurements: 47 x 36 cm; 84 x 55 cm (frame). A very characteristic example of the art of Béjar who, together with Joaquín Vahamonde, capitalised on the speciality of high bourgeois pastel portraiture among the Alfonsine high society of the first decades of the 20th century, the painting is also extraordinarily representative of the true adoration that both pastelists felt for English Diecioechesque portraiture, whose decorative elegance they tried to imitate and which was the fundamental key to their success in Spain at the time. On this occasion, Béjar was inspired by the portrait of a young woman in elegant dress. Béjar was a Spanish painter, illustrator and draughtsman who specialised in pastel portraits and also produced decorative paintings. He trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and at the San Fernando School in Madrid, and furthered his training in Rome, where he was a pupil of Luis de Madrazo and José Gutiérrez de la Vega. As a decorative painter he painted the ornamentation of the palace of the Marquis of Marianao and the residence of the Marquis of Alella, both in Barcelona. He took part in the Barcelona Fine Arts Exhibition of 1895 and the National Fine Arts Exhibitions, where he received honourable mentions in 1895 and 1904, respectively. He participated as an illustrator in the Álbum Salón de la Editorial Seguí. In 1909 he travelled to America and later to London, where he lived until his death (Balbás Ibáñez, Mª S., E.M.N.P., 2006, T.II, p. 478).