Antonio Cortés y Aguilar

ANTONIO CORTÉS Y AGUILAR (Seville, 1827-Lagny-sur-Marne, 1908).
"Landscape".
Oil on canvas.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century with faults.
Measurements. 46 x 56 cm; 70 x 79 cm (frame).
Antonio Cortés was a Spanish-French painter whose work focused almost exclusively on the representation of landscapes and genre scenes. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel of Hungary in Seville, an institution that played a crucial role in the consolidation of his pictorial language. In 1855, on the occasion of his participation in the Universal Exhibition in Paris, he moved to the French capital, later settling in the town of Lagny-sur-Marne, where he lived until his death in 1908. His work is currently held in important public collections, such as the Museo del Romanticismo in Madrid, where his painting Paisaje con ganado (Landscape with Cattle) is housed, and in the Bellver collection in Seville, which houses his Paisaje con pastores y rebaño (Landscape with Shepherds and Herd).
Antonio Cortés belonged to a family of artists. His brother, Andrés Cortés y Aguilar (1812-1879), also devoted himself to painting, and his artistic legacy was continued by his son, Édouard Cortès, a renowned French painter linked to the late Impressionist movement. The career of Antonio Cortés is a significant example of the artistic dialogue between Spain and France in the 19th century, as well as of the consolidation of landscape painting as an autonomous genre within European pictorial realism.