The painter Juan Espina y Capo
1892. Oil on canvas.Room 062A
The portrayed figure is forty-four years old and is turned three quarters to the right. Sorolla paints him in a bust-length portrait, without depicting half of his body. He appears somewhat dishevelled and with an untrimmed beard and moustache. He is endowed with a bohemian air, enhanced by the white shirt with a dark scarf and a painter´s smock over it. The execution of the jacket and background is very loose, and the face is very realistic and detailed. Sorolla delves into the psychology of his male portraits, in which he reduces his palette to a few tones.
Juan Espina y Capó was born in 1848 in Torrejón de Velasco (Madrid). He attended the San Isidro Secondary School in Madrid, where his interest in drawing and painting was awoken. He left the school to go to Paris, where he may have come into contact with the Barbizon school. On his return to Madrid, he became one of the main followers of the Belgian landscape painter Carlos de Haes at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving.
Artistas pintados: retratos de pintores y escultores del siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Gener, 1997, p.154
