Spanish paintings XIX and XX centuries

ArtdelPrado presents our particular selection of the most influential Spanish artists from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Most of them are represented in the private collections of the main Spanish galleries such as Prado Museum, Thyssen Museum, and the most important private collections.

A period in Spanish paintings ended after Goya, inspiring the composition’s style change of 19th centuries to academic art, history paintings, as well as landscape paintings influenced by Carlos de Haes. Amidst 19th century different impressionist grandmasters emerged, leading out to innovative techniques such as emphasizing the effects of light and the brush strokes. On the other hand, the Spanish artists also began to paint subjects such as natural landscapes, capturing fleeting instants and its light, getting closer to impressionist art that started to reign in Europe.

It is difficult to classify the Spanish painters of late 19^th century into a specific art trend – the artists do not belong to a pure school or style but are influenced by other schools. The preference for “Costumbrismo”, regionalism and local themes continues. Most of them complete their training spending time in Rome or Paris, in contact with the newest artistic trends and bohemia. Many Spanish painters draw inspiration from Romanticism and Realism art, therefore Spanish Impressionism starts in the early years of 20^th century, tending to a “mixed” technique which receives influence from other currents such as Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Modernism, and so on…

On this context, Carlos de Haes, Spanish-Belgian painter based in Spain, became a reference and master on its time. He modernized Spanish landscape painting, imposing the open-air painting, the loose brushstroke, the study of light and colour.

The “Belle Epoque” styles became in vogue throughout Europe, at the end of 19^th and 20^th centuries. Spanish writers, poets, artists, or simply wealthy and elegant people went to Paris and, on their return, they also initiated the Spanish “Belle Epoque” current.

Already in the 20^th century, Modernism was the trending movement. Modernism starts from a more or less absolute subjectivism, emphasizing on affections, sensations, feelings or ideas that the artists wants to arouse. Hence it converges the impressionism, idealized naturalism, and symbolism that pervades the modernist paintings.

In painting, the impressionist technique is generally associated with modernist currents. Modernism is therefore manifested collectively at the Paris International Exposition in 1889, attracting Spanish painters in whom French artists such as Renoir and Monet exerted a clear influence. Later, the North European modernism schools influenced with regards to the interpretation of light, and their way to produce the impression of reality.