Self-portrait
1907. Oil on canvas.Room 062A
Among the several portraits made by Menéndez Pidal, there are few self-portraits. Strictly speaking, there are only two: one, painted in 1895 (private collection in Madrid), and this one in the Museo del Prado, painted in 1907, which is equally sober and more direct and franker in its execution.
This self-portrait is of great expressive frankness due to its frontal composition. It shows the artist in his prime, the same year in which he was appointed academician of Fine Arts. The chromatic sobriety, in the typical Spanish tradition, can be perceived in the choice of the colours of the clothes, with a brown waistcoat that harmonises with the slightly brown beard and a bluish tie with a hint of red. These brushstrokes as well as the glitter of the gold spectacles provide the painting with a peculiar light. The whites of the shirt stand out for the boldness and ease of the vertical brushstrokes, rubbed on the collar. The Sevillian-ground-coloured background barely diverts attention from his face. He is staring directly, as if the artist had refused all excess and rejected the elegant gesture that appears – very studied in its seeming naturalness – in his previous self-portrait.
Barón, Javier, Luis Menéndez Pidal en el Prado. Boletín del Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 2004, p.73-75
