Rosario Weiss

She was born in Madrid on October 2, 1814. She was the daughter of Leocadia Zorilla, who was Goya's housekeeper since at least 1815. From a young age, the Aragonese painter instructed her in drawing. Between at least May and September 1824, she also received training from architect Tiburcio Pérez Cuervo, with whom she began using the stump and Chinese ink. Before the end of September that year, Leocadia and her children Guillermo and Rosario had moved into Goya’s residence in Bordeaux, where they lived until the artist’s death on April 16, 1828. In this French city, a significant center of Spanish liberal exile, Rosario continued to receive instruction from the painter until 1825, when she entered the public and free school ran by Pierre Lacour (1778-1859), where she received more academic training.

In July 1833, the family returned to Madrid after the political amnesty was declared the previous year. There, Rosario worked temporarily as a copyist at the Prado Museum, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and in some private collections like the one of the Duchess of San Fernando. She also practiced miniature painting—though her works are not identified—pencil portraiture, which constitutes the bulk of her production, and lithography. With this technique, learned in Bordeaux, she executed her well-known portraits of Mesonero Romanos, Zorrilla, Espronceda, and Larra.

Between 1834 and 1842, she participated in the annual exhibitions of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which honored her on June 21, 1840, with the title of "Academic of Merit in Painting." A year later, her work El Silencio received a silver medal at the exhibition organized by the Société Philomatique de Bordeaux. Since 1837, she was also a member of the Artistic and Literary Lyceum of Madrid, where she actively participated in the weekly artistic competition sessions—where she created numerous portraits—as well as in the exhibitions held in 1837, 1838, and 1839 (posthumously, also in 1844 and 1846).

Supported by the liberal circle, on January 18, 1842, she received her highest professional recognition when she was appointed as drawing teacher to Queen Isabel II and her sister, Infanta Luisa Fernanda. Her salary was 8,000 reales per year. Rosario Weiss held this position for a short time, as she died of non-epidemic cholera on July 31, 1843 (Sánchez Díez, Carlos, Biography of Rosario Weiss in: Drawings by Rosario Weiss in the Lázaro Collection, Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, 2015, pp. 12-15).