ENRIQUE SIMONET Y LOMBARDO (Valencia, 1863 - Madrid,... Lot 15

ENRIQUE SIMONET Y LOMBARDO (Valencia, 1863 - Madrid, 1927). "Still life with carnations". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower left corner. Size: 42 x 32,5 cm; 61 x 51 cm (frame). 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, travelling all over 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 Malaga cathedral. He visited Paris several times, and in 1890 he travelled around the Mediterranean. In 1892 he won the first medal at the Madrid International Exhibition with the work that was his first success, "Flevit super illam", painted in Rome but for which he had researched during his travels in the Holy Land. He also won prizes at the Universal Exposition in Chicago (1894), Barcelona (1896) and Paris (1900). Between 1893 and 1894 he travelled to Morocco as a correspondent for "La Ilustración Española y Americana", the context in which he painted the work we present here, as part of the expedition of the extraordinary embassy of General Martínez Campos in Marrakech, whose mission was to reach an agreement with Sultan Muley Hassan to put an end to the war started in 1893 by the Rif tribes. In 1901 he obtained a professorship 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 Malaga Fine Arts Museum and the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts.