Portrait of a Gentleman
1875. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
He was born in Alcoy on the 29th of January 1850 and moved to Valencia when he was still very young. Emilio Sala developed his early artistic skills alongside his first cousin and painter Plácido Francés. Sala attended the Academy of San Carlos in that city, where Francés was a teacher. Once in Madrid, he became enthusiastic about the paintings of Rosales and Velázquez during his frequent visits to the Museo del Prado.
The frankness with which he executed some of his early portraits, such as that of María Guerrero as a girl (P04188), immediately evokes the art of Rosales. He adopted large planes of colour and straight, broken profiles that modelled the figures. He also displayed a great pictorial freedom which became more restrained in his later portraits, influenced by Parisian bourgeois portraiture.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Maestros de la pintura valenciana: del siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, Autoridad Portuaria, 1997, p.165-166
