GUSTAVO GALLARDO (Seville, 1891-1971)
"Neapolitan Woman with a Pitcher", 1922.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Signed, dated and located (Rome) in the lower right corner.
Size: 99 x 75 cm; 119 x 94 cm (frame).
Female portrait, in which the author gives the leading role to a woman who represents a popular archetype, due to the regionalist clothes she wears, and the presence of the pitcher on which she rests her hands. This work belongs to the artist's formative period, when he was studying in Italy. The new 19th-century genre of genre painting was born as a way of interpreting a growing sense of national consciousness, now present in the middle classes as they moved towards social hegemony. To a certain extent, the painters' concern was to deepen the vision of their country through a language, that of painting, which everyone could understand, thus helping the common people to understand the nature and meaning of their nationality, especially as it had manifested itself in the recent past, still vivid in the memory of the elders. Of the two fundamental costumbrista schools of 19th-century Spain, the Sevillian and the Madrid school, the latter differs from the gentle picturesqueness of the former in its more pungent and harsh vision, sometimes going so far as to show not only the vulgar, but even indulging in heart-rending visions of a clichéd world of the working class, in which the spirit of criticism is evident.
Gustavo Gallardo was a painter of Sevillian origin who began his academic education at the Santa Isabel de Hungría School of Fine Arts in Seville. There he learned from masters such as Gonzalo Bilbao and Virgilio Mattoni. In 1913 he undertook a trip to various Spanish towns, reaching Tangiers, the centre of inspiration for many artists of the time. Four years later, in 1917, he left for Rome with the intention of broadening his artistic knowledge, remaining in the eternal city until 1924, the year in which he was awarded the third medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. After his return to Spain he worked as a painter and in 1934 combined this activity with teaching, teaching at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid and later at the School of Arts and Crafts in Seville.