19th century Spanish school

Spanish school of the XIX century.
"Lady with mantilla".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 75 x 49 cm; 80 x 55 cm (frame).

The costumbrista theme sinks its roots in the romantic vision that, among other aspects, pays special attention to those traditional, popular or typical customs, which reflect what is understood as the genuine way of being and living of the people of the village, of their traditions and values, and it does it, in addition, from a mythical and idealized perspective in which the popular classes, especially those of the rural environment, are always opposed to the model that personifies the growing city and grown in the heat of the industrialization. This model of costumbrismo assumed in Romanticism survives for a long time in the European pictorial culture of the 19th century, since later Realism, although it sometimes introduces a more objective and dispassionate vision and focuses its attention on the hardness of work, continues to disseminate images of peasants and their tasks, rural customs, traditional trades, in short, much of what was feared to disappear in a few decades.