ARTIST: AFTER Martin Rico Y Ortega (Spanish, Italian, French, 1833 - 1908)
TITLE: Venice Cityscape
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Minor craquelure. No visible inpaint under UV light.
ART SIZE: 12 x 8 inches / 30 x 20 cm
FRAME SIZE: unframed (In-House framing available)
SIGNATURE: lower right
CATEGORY: old antique vintage painting for auction sale online
AD: ART CONSIGNMENTS WANTED. CONTACT US
SKU#: 123678
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BIOGRAPHY:
Rico was born in El Escorial, Madrid, and received his earliest formal training at the city's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he studied under Jenaro Perez Villaamil, the Academy's first professor of landscape painting. Under the tutelage of Perez Villaamil, Rico's earliest works show him influenced by Romanticism, the style for which his teacher was known. In 1860, having been awarded a government sponsored scholarship, Rico moved to Paris to continue his studies. Once in France, Rico looked to the artists of the Barbizon school for inspiration, and Charles-Francois Daubigny in particular. His landscapes from this decade thus depict the French and Swiss countryside in a fully accomplished Realist style. Toward the end of 1870, due to political and social unrest caused by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Rico decided to leave France and return to his native Spain.At the invitation of his good friend and colleague Maria Fortuny, Rico moved to the southern city of Granada, joining Fortuny and his wife Cecilia, as well as the painter Ricardo de Madrazo. The three artists worked closely during this period, with the styles of Rico and Fortuny overlapping so much that their watercolors a specialty for both artists were often confused for one another. It was during this time that, through Fortuny's influence, Rico's paintings began to reveal a newfound sense of luminosity and color. His time in Andalucia was, according to his memoirs, one of his happiest, and also one of his most artistically productive periods.