EUGENIO LUCAS VELÁZQUEZ (Madrid, 1817 - 1870). "Bandoleros",... Lot 16

EUGENIO LUCAS VELÁZQUEZ (Madrid, 1817 - 1870). "Bandoleros", 1855. Oil on mahogany panel. Size: 30 x 22.5 cm; 42 x 34 cm (frame). Eugenio Lucas Velázquez offers us a work of clearly romantic heritage, starring a group of bandits resting in a poorly finished interior. The work is fully in line with the Spanish regionalist trend, still firmly anchored in 19th century aesthetics, where the vindication of the Spanish is not limited to the subject matter, but also affects the technical aspect: we see an impastoed and undone workmanship, rich in material and also in detail, which reflects the brightness of the canvases in the same way as Diego Velázquez did, a great reference point together with Francisco de Goya for a 19th century Spanish school which rediscovered the modernity of its old masters. Mentioned since the 19th century as Eugenio Lucas Padilla, or Eugenio Lucas the Elder, he was the Spanish Romantic artist who best understood Goya's art. Trained in Neoclassicism at the San Fernando Academy, he soon turned his training around and devoted himself to studying Velázquez and, above all, Goya, whose works he admired and copied in the Prado Museum. In Goya's painting, Lucas Velázquez found the starting point for developing his own imaginative personal painting of fantastic visions and unleashed passions, in the purest Romantic style. He also took his subject matter from Goya and painted scenes of the Inquisition, witches' Sabbaths, pilgrimages and bullfights. In 1850 he also painted the ceiling of the Royal Theatre in Madrid, which no longer exists, and later he was appointed honorary chamber painter and knight of the order of Charles III by Queen Isabella II. As a true Romantic, he made several trips, including stays in Italy, Morocco and Paris. His works are characterised by the use of a spirited brushstroke and an unhurried execution, without any concern for drawing, with a dense, impastoed material of great chromatic richness and the presence of strong chiaroscuro. He achieved great success as a genre painter and as a painter of fantastic and sinister scenes, although he was also an excellent landscape and portrait painter. His work is well represented in the Prado Museum, and also in other centres such as the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Goya Museum in Castres (France).