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Aline Masson was Madrazo’s favourite model for genre paintings. Her heavy-lidded gaze and slightly defiant attitude convey the frivolous atmosphere of Paris, where Madrazo’s portraits met with great acclaim. Here, the artist displays his technical skill in using a reduced range of colours, applied with deft, confident brushstrokes.
The eldest of six children born to Joaquín María de Errazu and Guadalupe Rubio de Tejada, Manuela was born in Querétaro (Mexico) in 1839. Her family, of Spanish origin, amassed a huge fortune through the industrial development of that Central-American country. When she was fifteen years old, her parents moved to the most exclusive neighborhood in Paris. There, despite some cri
Sobre un fondo cerúleo, de ejecución rápida y desenvuelta, destaca la figura de una gitana de medio cuerpo. Como corresponde al estereotipo racial femenino, es de rostro ovalado, labios carnosos, cabello negro ensortijado y grandes ojos negros. Cubre su talle un mantón rojo, floreado, y una mantilla negra que deja caer sobre sus brazos. Como aderezo, unos claveles en su pelo, zarcillos colgantes y
This portrait is one of the most beautiful examples of the great actress María Guerrero’s (1867-1928) lifelong obsession with her own image. She began having her portrait painted by the most famous painters of her time while still an infant. This fixation was favored by her father’s friendship with many of those artists, and as a result, the Museo del Prado has several splendid likeness of
Benito Soriano Murillo (1827-1891) was an artist and deputy director of the Museo del Prado. He shared Raimundo de Madrazo and his family’s love of music, referred to by the guitar and piano. The elegant pose, characteristic of the French tradition that Madrazo assimilated in Paris, coexists here with the influence of Spanish portraiture and the style of the artist’s father, Federico de Madrazo.
Aline Masson, the painter´s model, contemplates the signet -sealed envelope she holds in her right hand, which presumably arrived with the bouquet of flowers she holds in her left. The blue robe with cottony white edging gives the scene a homey feeling appropriate to the subject, but wisely used by the painter to bring out the young woman´s fine, pale skin. This work is approached in the style of
This masterpiece by Raimundo de Madrazo represents his mature style in a worldly portrait painted with a personality that transcends his varied and different influences. Made a year before he was awarded first prize at the Universal Exposition of 1878 in Paris, it reveals the confidence of maturity. Moreover, this is a portrait of a very close friend who was also an outstanding collector. Errazu p
A portrait of Aline Masson, Madrazo´s favorite model and the esthetic ideal of femininity in late-nineteenth-century bourgeois Paris. The white mantilla over a red embroidered shawl and the flowers in her hair link this work to the nineteenth-century French taste for Spanish things, a detail Madrazo emphasized in many of his works. This painting entered the Prado Museum as part of the Ramón
Oblivious to vindications of the intellectual and spiritual dimension of women, Raimundo de Madrazo continued to explore the sophistication of their external appearance, adjusting his portraits of his female clients to a fashion that called amidst the rise of the Suffragette movement for a return to the values and aesthetics of the eighteenth century. It was especially successful among the women o
Precediendo a otros pintores españoles como Sorolla y Zuloaga, que adquirieron gran renombre como retratistas en Madrid y en París y realizaron después numerosos retratos en los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, Raimundo de Madrazo viajó allí en diversas ocasiones y pintó retratos del gran mundo de Nueva Inglaterra, entre los que se cuenta éste, hecho en 1899 en Nueva York. Dos años antes había real
