Eugenio Lucas Velázquez

EUGENIO LUCAS VELÁZQUEZ (Madrid, 1817 - 1870).
"Majos en tertulia".
Oil on canvas.
Work published in ARNAIZ, J.M., "Eugenio Lucas. His life and his work". Ed M. Montal, Madrid, 1981. pp. 298-299.
It presents small tears, the canvas is unstretched and the frame with important losses.
Measurements: 80 x 60 cm; 90 x 71 cm (frame).
This type of themes in which young women were represented dressed as majas, being harassed by men or in some cases with older women as a celestina, became popular during the time, being Eugenio Lucas Velázquez one of the greatest exponents of this theme. These images, which were based on a costumbrista and populist tradition, acquired a new dimension from the hand of the painter from Madrid who, through his palette of dark tones and his rapid stroke, as can be seen here, abandoned the idyllic sense of this type of scene and focused the viewer's gaze on a symbolic and critical image of the society of the time.
Mentioned since the 19th century as Eugenio Lucas Padilla, or Eugenio Lucas the Elder, he was the Spanish Romantic artist who best understood Goya's art. Trained in the neoclassicism of the Academy of San Fernando, he soon turned his training around and dedicated himself to the study of Velázquez and, above all, Goya, whose works he admired and copied in the Prado Museum. In Goya's painting, Lucas Velázquez found the starting point to develop an imaginative personal painting, of fantastic visions and unleashed passions, within the purest romantic style. His work represents, in fact, the best costumbrismo of the Madrid school of Spanish Romanticism. He also took the subject matter from Goya, and painted scenes of the Inquisition, covens, pilgrimages and bullfights. His canvases such as "Condemned by the Inquisition" or "The Hunter" (both in the Prado Museum) even attracted Manet himself during his trip to Spain. Lucas Velázquez also painted, in 1850, the now disappeared ceiling of the Teatro Real in Madrid, and the following year he was appointed honorary painter of the chamber as a landscape painter. In 1853 he was named Knight of the Order of Carlos III by Queen Isabel II. During the decade of the fifties he continued his palace career, being named appraiser of Goya's Black Paintings in 1855, the same year in which he took part in the Universal Exposition of Paris, where his work was very well received by the French critics. From 1868, the year of Isabel II's resignation to the throne, his decline began in parallel to that of the monarchy. In the sixties, as a good romantic, he made several trips, among which his stays in Italy, Morocco and Paris stand out. In the French capital, he also met one of the greatest exponents of French impressionism, Edouard Manet. He died in 1870, leaving as a legacy an important and varied work in which we can glimpse a man of unquestionable originality and to whom no field was alien. His works are characterized by the use of a spirited brushstroke and a casual style, without drawing concerns, with a dense and impastoed matter of great chromatic richness and with the presence of strong chiaroscuro. He achieved great success as a painter of manners and scenes of fantastic and sinister character, although it is true that he was also an excellent landscape painter and portraitist. The work of Lucas Velázquez is very well represented in the Prado Museum, and also in other centers such as the Fine Arts Museum of Bilbao, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Goya Museum in Castres (France).