José Renau Montoro

JOSÉ RENAU MONTORO (Valencia, 1874 - 1941).
Two bodegoes: "Partridges and ducks", 1901. "Pheasant and rabbits", 1902.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 100 x 58 cm, 116 x 72 cm (frame) each.

José Renau Montoro was a Spanish painter, teacher and restorer active between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. He developed his career mainly in Valencia, where he was closely linked to academia and artistic restoration work. He was trained in a context marked by the Valencian pictorial tradition and stood out for his academic style of painting, with religious themes, portraits and genre scenes, as well as for his mastery of drawing and technique.

In addition to his pictorial production, Renau Montoro had an important work as a restorer, intervening in old works for churches, institutions and private collections, which gave him professional prestige in his time. In many of his works he signed simply as "J. Renau", a circumstance that has caused later confusion with his son, the poster artist and muralist Josep Renau Berenguer. He died in 1941, leaving a solid and representative trajectory of Valencian academic art of transition between two centuries.