1800s: The Century of the Portrait. Collections of the Museo del Prado. From Enlightenment to Modernity

From the very beginning, portraiture has been linked to individuals eager to display and perpetuate their financial, social or political power. In the 1800s, after the French Revolution, monarchies grew increasingly weak, as evidenced by the gradually declining importance of royal portraits, even though they were just as large and imposing as in centuries past. Consequently, this subgenre is represented in the exhibition by medals, where we can see the unbroken line of Spanish monarchs from Charles IV to Alfonso XIII.

Other powerful people enjoyed being portrayed; for example, the noted writer and politician Jovellanos commissioned various likenesses throughout his career, including Goya’s famous second portrait of him. However, it was Spain’s national government that took the lead in forming new portrait galleries, chief among them the gallery of congressional speakers, which embodied the legitimate power of the people represented by their elected members of parliament. It also made an effort to immortalise Spain’s various ministers, creating a complete series that shaped the different ministerial galleries, some examples of which ended up at the Museo del Prado.

With the advent of the Enlightenment and, above all, the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, people began to see childhood in a new light. Instead of mere future adults who only acquired true value when they came of age, children came to be considered important in their own right. In fact, once Romanticism took hold, childhood began to be viewed as a privileged moment in people’s lives when spontaneity, grace and innocence shone most brightly—virtues that would be stifled by the negative influence of the world and its customs when they reached adulthood.

Consequently, child portraits became far more numerous, and their subjects were depicted in a novel way that highlighted those qualities. During Romanticism, children were often depicted with parks and gardens in the background to show their close ties to nature. As painting grew increasingly natural and lifelike, portraits made in the final third of the century allowed their young subjects greater freedom and movement. However, there are also portraits (ranging from the Romantic period to the early twentieth century) that prove some parents wanted their children to be depicted in the manner of the great Spanish Golden Age painters, especially Velázquez, who was the epitome of both nobility and naturalness.

In female portraiture, the social standing of the sitter is conveyed by two main elements: clothing and jewellery. It is interesting to note that, in addition to aristocrats and bourgeois ladies, some women were portrayed simply because artists found their appearance attractive or striking. This is the case of the ciociara or Italian peasant woman and, in Spain, the working-class manolas and majas, whose picturesque appeal and comeliness—occasionally idealised and in other cases blatantly sensual—caught many a painter's eye. Additionally, thanks to people’s curiosity about ethnic groups and lands that were deemed exotic at the time, artists often portrayed Roma, Moroccans and Filipinos. In many cases, portraits are tinged by the artist’s (and the viewer’s) fascination with otherness, things foreign to their own civilisation and culture. On occasion, this fascination even inspired bourgeois sitters to dress up as Italian peasants, Andalusian majas or Arab types. In 1859, the introduction of the carte-de-visite (a small card with a photographic portrait) meant that the middle classes were finally able to order and own images of themselves, friends and family members. Portraiture immediately took off among upper-middle-class women eager to distinguish themselves in society. The result was an abundance of grandly ceremonial, full-length portraits of lavishly dressed ladies in ostentatious surroundings.

The modern figure of the bourgeois man came to the fore in the nineteenth century. The standard male attire of trousers, jacket or frock coat, and hat was far simpler and plainer than in previous centuries and has endured to the present day, albeit with some concessions to changing fashions. With this outfit, it became impossible to differentiate between aristocrats and upper-middle-class gentlemen. The severity of men’s clothing, associated with the economic rationality of capitalism, prompted artists to focus on capturing their facial expressions and personality.

The rise of such likenesses coincided with the appearance of notably picturesque ones, motivated by the typically Romantic interest in the individual and the specific values of the common folk. More than generic depictions of popular types, these were genuine painted and photographed portraits of particular individuals from different parts of Spain (especially Andalusia) and the Philippines and other colonies, and of foreigners like Moroccans who represented a world of exotic yet real images.

Family group portraits, though not traditionally abundant, have been important in Spanish painting, particularly pictures commissioned by the monarchy. In the 1800s, the custom spread to the middle classes. Such portraits usually pictured several generations, expressing the continuity and future of the family unit.

Professional group portraits also entered the scene, although in this genre photography proved more popular than painting. It was customary to have photographs taken of factory workers and shop employees. All this confirms the importance of social groups, particularly in the latter half of the century, when the working class became increasingly aware of their power to make demands and change their situation.

One of the consequences of the growing importance of art after the Age of Enlightenment was that painters and sculptors became aware of their own worth and, in the case of the most talented, their unique role in society. This explains the proliferation of self-portraits, some of which were destined for the artists’ galleries of the different academies. These institutions had been founded on the principles of Enlightenment thought, which allowed artists to go from artisans grouped in guilds to liberal professionals and eventually members of the new bourgeois class.

With the advent of Romanticism, self-portraiture became a means of probing the artist’s own psyche, motivated by a sense of heightened subjectivity, beginning a representative tradition that has endured to the present day.

At the same time, artists became quite fond of portraying other artists as a result of effusive friendships formed in their student or academy days and cemented by shared experiences abroad, like those fortunate enough to receive a grant to work and study in Rome. Such portraits were usually small bust-length likenesses set against a neutral background that focused on the subject’s features and personality, were very natural and lifelike, and denoted mutual esteem and affection. Being intended for fellow practitioners of the arts, who were naturally good judges of artistic quality, these pieces tend to be quite finely made. The Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1971 with the Museo del Prado, planned to create a gallery of artists’ portraits, although it was never actually exhibited as such.