Voces del Prado

Mother and aunt, copyists in the Prado

José Torreblanca Prieto, Grandson of José Prieto, Lead Concierge, 1936-1948

They were migrants from Jaén. My mother must have done some course or other at the Fine Arts School, a very low grade one, but she had talent. My aunt Teresa certainly could paint, and she even made money from it. By the time she married she’d already done a lot of paintings and had a dowry from selling them, I don’t know how exactly. My mother did it as a hobby because she didn’t have any other work or other ambitions, just being a housewife, and as she liked to paint she ended up painting in the Museum, doing copies. My aunt took it all more professionally and produced a large body of work. She died not long ago, she lived to be around 100 and her house was full of paintings from the Museum. You went in and it was surprising the number of paintings there were.