ULPIANO CHECA (Colmenar de Oreja, Madrid, 1860 - Dax, France, 1916).
"The Procession.
Oil on linen.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by Doña Monique Larran-Lange.
It shows traces of gilding.
It has faults and deficiencies in the canvas.
Signed at intervals of one metre (approx).
Measurements: 19.5 m x 0.55 m.
In January 1893, L'Avenir de Bagnères-de-Bigorre devoted a report to the artist's move to the town where his wife has a holiday home: "... the studio, barely installed and already so crowded, with this procession unfolding, a living tapestry, along the wall, against a golden background. Checa amused himself by capturing some of the inhabitants of Bagnères and imagined a procession of the Blessed Sacrament with monks, priests, nuns, choirboys, pensioners and passers-by. He mixed the gothic with the modern, the cameramen in their modern costumes with the musicians in white trousers trimmed with red, wearing a gibbous hat topped with an aigrette. It is a high-spirited pochade, surprising in its colours, tones and animation. The resemblance of some of the best known characters of Bagnères is striking. The work is made up of 21 main groups and is signed at regular intervals. For almost twenty years, the Procession was a silent witness to Checa's work in the Pyrenees. When the painter's studio was demolished and replaced by a school in the 1960s, it was saved. Its interest lies in its intimate and familiar character. Ulpiano Checa offers us a poetic and bucolic image inspired by Classical Antiquity. A young man in robes, seated by the sea, gazes into the distance. Beside him rests an object that could well appear to be a lyre, which would turn our protagonist into Orpheus. This piece is the last remnant of the now defunct studio. As such, it was exhibited in 2001 at the Museo Ulpiano Checa in Colmenar de Oreja (Bayonne, 6 March 2002).
Ulpiano Checa began his artistic training in 1873 at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid. In 1876 he moved to the San Fernando Academy, where he became a pupil of Federico de Madrazo. On completing his studies, in 1884, he obtained a grant to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome. During his third year he sent a work that won him the first medal at the National Exhibition of 1887 and the second at the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1888. At the end of 1887 he took up residence in Paris, where he exhibited regularly at the Salons, achieving success when his work was awarded a prize in 1890. There he combined painting with his work as a graphic correspondent for "La Ilustración Española y Americana". At the beginning of the century he settled in the south of France, in Dax, where he remained until his death in 1916. It is important to note how Checa's work influenced the adventure films of Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s. Film directors such as Stanley Kubrick ("Spartacus"), Mario Bonnard ("The Last Days of Pompeii"), Mervyn LeRoy ("Quo Vadis"), William Wyler ("Ben-Hur") or, more recently, Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") were inspired by his works for their set designs, costumes, mass movement studies and characterisation of characters. In fact, he also influenced earlier filmmakers, since in the 1930s and 1940s his work showed directors the possibility of creating visual effects of depth and perspective hitherto unheard of in cinema. During his lifetime, in 1901, he collaborated with Henry Sienkiewick on the set and costume design for the theatrical version of the novel "Quo Vadis". In fact, part of Checa's work is based on literature, especially this novel, "Ben-Hur" and "Les Miserables". Works by Ulpiano Checa are kept in the Museo Municipal Ulpiano Checa in Colmenar de Oreja, the Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, among others.