Attributed to Leonardo Alenza

Attributed to LEONARDO ALENZA Y NIETO (Madrid, 1807 - 1845).
"Drawing notebook.
Set of 16 graphite drawings on paper.
One of them is a red pencil drawing.
Provenance: Felix Boix.
Measurements: 14,5 x 21,5 x 1,5 cm (Album).
Drawing album that contains sixteen drawings that bring together some landscapes, a study of a baby's head and mostly folk and popular scenes. These themes, together with the artist's technique, the composition and the presence of everyday archetypes, invite us to think of Leonardo Alenza's work.
Leonardo Alenza captured in his drawings and watercolors with acute sensitivity the Madrid that was contemporary to him. His works reveal urban landscapes and scenes that he probably observed on his walks, which he himself described as "hunts", through the popular neighborhoods or along the riverbanks. Nor are his compositions lacking in the typical characters of Madrid's costumbrismo: popular figures, workers, delinquents and common people that he surely saw every day around his home, in the Plaza de San Ildefonso, the Corredera and other central areas. Alenza thus captured a living gallery of social types, modest trades and everyday scenes that portray both the customs and the risks of life in the capital of the nineteenth century.
Leonardo Alenza began his training learning drawing with Juan Antonio Ribera, and attending the coloring and composition classes taught by José de Madrazo at the Royal Academy of San Fernando. In 1842 he was named academician of merit of San Fernando. He specialized in small format costumbrist works, as well as in portraits full of life in which he knew how to endow his models with expressiveness and psychological depth. His oil paintings are characterized by their loose, stain-based execution, as well as by his masterful handling of light and his mastery of color. His palette is dominated, as we can see here, by brown and muted tones, an inheritance of the more sober Goya, that of the "Black Paintings", which he also approaches in the subject matter chosen in many of his works, of which the oil painting we are commenting on here is an eloquent example. In fact, Aureliano de Beruete considered him the most important painter influenced by Goya. Leonardo Alenza is widely represented in the Prado Museum, and also has works in the Romantic and Municipal Museums of Madrid, the National Library, the Lázaro Galdiano and the Marquis of Cerralbo.