Rafael Senet

RAFAEL SENET Y PÉREZ (Seville, 1856-1926),
"Venice".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 38 x 58 cm; 59 x 79 cm (frame).
It is a painting framed in the tradition of Venetian vedutismo, whose history began in the eighteenth century and was enhanced by the Grand Tour. This tradition continued during the 19th century and well into the 20th century, since the city had become fashionable thanks to theorists like John Ruskin, or painters like Fortuny who, through their visions of the city, projected a voluptuous and somewhat exotic image of the city, which became the perfect setting for culture.
Spanish painter and watercolorist who cultivated genre, oriental and landscape themes. Senet was linked to the Sevillian group of landscape painters of Alcalá de Guadaira, led by Emilio Sánchez Perrier. He began his training in the workshop of Teodoro Aramburu at the School of Fine Arts in Seville, where he was a disciple of Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer and Eduardo Cano. He moved to Madrid in 1880, where he became acquainted with the paintings of the great masters of the Prado, and a year later he traveled to Rome to further his studies, thanks to a scholarship granted by the banker Ramón de Ibarra. He sent his works to national and foreign exhibitions, he obtained second medals in the National Fine Arts Exhibition of 1884 and in the International Exhibition of Munich. He participated in the Exhibition of the Center of Watercolorists of Barcelona and in the V International of Fine Arts of 1907. Much of his production is in English private collections, since the London gallery owner Arthur Tooth marketed a large number of his paintings. He immortalized corners of picturesque villages such as the one we are dealing with here, a view from the stream that crosses a village, with its Romanesque architecture ennobled by the use of a precise brushstroke and a palette rich in tonal nuances.