Romàn Navarro

ROMÁN NAVARRO GARCÍA DE VINUESA (La Coruña, 1854 - 1928).
"Seller of booklets".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 63 x 40 cm; 81 x 58 cm (frame).

As we can see in this book seller, Román Navarro's costumbrista portraits focus on popular characters and traditional types, represented with a realistic and detailed approach that pays special attention to the clothing, physical features and cultural elements that define their identity.

Román Navarro studied military career and was assigned to the hussar corps, an occupation he combined with his painting studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in La Coruña. With a scholarship from the Provincial Council, he furthered his artistic training in Rome, and then made a trip to Europe. On his return, he was assigned to Barcelona as a drawing teacher, a position he exchanged with José Ruiz Blasco, Picasso's father, and returned to La Coruña, where he became a teacher and director of the School of Arts and Crafts. There he will teach great painters such as Souto Cuero, Morlli, Vaamonde, Francisco Llorens and Luis Mosquera. During these years he continued to combine his artistic career with his military career, in which he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was proposed as drawing teacher to the future Alfonso XIII, but he refused the position for personal reasons. He collaborated in magazines of the time and attended the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts of 1890 and 1897, being distinguished in the latter edition with an honorary mention. He was also awarded a gold medal at the Santiago de Compostela Exhibition in 1888, and an honorary medal at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1898. When he retired from the military profession he continued and intensified his work as a painter. He took part in the Galician Regional Exhibitions of 1917 and 1923, in La Coruña, and continued to work without interruption until his death.
As for his work, he practiced drawing, a discipline in which he excelled with Cervantine themes, and in painting, he was inclined towards equine and hunting themes, but especially military ones, in the same line of creation of the Catalan and also military Josep Cusachs, very lively and practiced in the years of the Restoration. However, it will be the portrait the genre in which he will stand out the most. In this aspect it is worth mentioning the portrait of "Cardenal Payá" (Diputación de La Coruña), and one of the king that belongs to the collection of the Prado Museum: "King Alfonso XII on horseback", a work that earned him the medal in the National of 1897. Other portraits of the monarchs by this painter are known, such as the one in the Army Museum in Madrid. In addition, Román Navarro is represented in the Diputación de La Coruña, several museums in Galicia and various Ministries, and in the Palacio de Oriente.