Eugenio Lucas Villaamil

EUGENIO LUCAS VILLAAMIL (Madrid, 1858-1919).
"Procession".
Oil on cardboard.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 23 x 12 cm; 35 x 23 cm (frame).
Eugenio Lucas Villaamil was a Spanish painter, Knight of the Order of Carlos III. Son of the painter Eugenio Lucas Velázquez and Francisca Villaamil, he began his artistic training in his father's workshop and continued his studies at the Special School of Painting in Madrid. He participated in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts with Italian works. His paintings maintain the influence of the characteristics of those of his father, with the repetition of Goyaesque themes, resolved with great compositional skill and joy of color. He also copied several themes of the Aragonese, as can be seen in his works Entrada a los toros, Sol of 1885 or Salida de los toros, lluvia of 1885, works set in that traditional Madrid, starring majas and chisperos, of great picturesqueness and popular flavor. In this thematic line, his work En el palco (In the Box) stands out, in which he brings together different resources tested by his father in some of his canvases. In addition to the bullfighting themes, numerous paintings of "Casacones" such as Baile en palacio of 1894 or El mago en palacio of 1894, in which he represents ornate palace environments in rococo style. He was a skilled copyist of some of Goya's paintings, those kept in the Prado, and was protected by the well-known collector José Lázaro Galdiano. He had a truly versatile style and was indisputably creative. He also executed portraits, such as the children's group of the García de Palencia brothers. The taste for urban prints, both of high and low society, is a constant in his work, as can be seen in Llegada al teatro en una noche de baile de mascaras (Arrival at the theater on a night of masked ball), from 1895. Villaamil is currently represented in the best national and international art galleries, including the Prado Museum, the National Gallery in Washington D. C., the Lázaro Galdiano and Mapfre foundations in Madrid, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Havana, Badajoz and Alava, the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection and the Camón Aznar Museum.