Manuel Barrera

MANUEL BARRERA (Active in Andalusia at the end of the 19th century).
"Drinking fine".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 62 x 45 cm; 69 x 50 cm (frame).
Traditionally, the Spanish painting and literature have been interested in the customs and popular types. The arrival of romanticism enlivened this current, contributing to the Hispanic tradition the vision that foreigners had of our people, due to the snobbery of a Europeanizing and liberal national bourgeoisie that, also by foreign influence and under the romantic fashion, turns its eyes to the people and the monuments of the past. This, general in all Spain, will be preferably in Andalusia, for being this land the dreamed goal of foreigners, and where the influence of the vision they had of the Spaniard and his peculiar customs had to be felt more strongly. Thus, of the two fundamental costumbrista schools, the Andalusian school is focused on a friendly and folkloric picturesqueness, far from any attempt at social criticism; on the other hand, the Madrid school is more pungent and harsh, sometimes showing not only the vulgar, but even recreating torn visions of a clichéd world of the slums, in which the spirit of criticism is evident. The Cádiz precursors Juan Rodríguez y Jiménez (1765-1830) and Joaquín Manuel Fernández Cruzado (1781-1856) were followed by a splendid development of the Seville school, where foreign influence seems to have played an important role, due to the influx of artists and travelers to the city, and the interest of the foreign clientele in the topical Spanish costumbrist scenes. This fact is corroborated by the foreign artistic clientele that had the small and friendly costumbrista paintings of one of its initiators, José Domínguez Bécquer (1805-1841), creator and formulator, to a great extent, of this theme, being the teacher of numerous disciples, and father of the poet Gustavo Adolfo and the painter Valeriano, author of popular types and scenes ("La Cruz de Mayo", private collection). Antonio Cabral Bejarano (1788-1861) also played an important role in the creation and formulation of Sevillian costumbrismo, who insists, more than on scenes, on isolated figures, with a certain theatricality, landscape backgrounds of local flavor and vaporous Murillesque atmosphere ("Un majo y una maja", Bosch collection, Barcelona).