Julio Moises

JULIO MOISÉS FERNÁNDEZ DE VILASANTE (Tarragona, 1888 - Cantabria, 1968).
"The painter and his daughter as a model".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 118 x 92 cm; 138 x 111 cm (frame).

The painting presents an interior scene, where a pubescent girl, sitting on a bed, poses naturally, while the painter appears reflected in the mirror of the closet, captured in the act of painting. This resource (the inclusion of the author in the work through the reflection) refers to baroque solutions of great tradition in the history of art, from Velázquez to the painters of the 19th century, and reveals Moisés' meta-pictorial reflection on the act of creation itself.

The treatment is typically his own: a painting with a restrained, luminous and serene atmosphere, dominated by a velvety palette, with pink hues that envelop the scene in a domestic, almost melancholic light. The modeling of the figures is solid, naturalistic and carefully drawn, but without rigidity; the artist manages to transmit the emotional delicacy of the paternal-filial bond and the introspection of the moment.

Julio Moisés Fernández de Villasante spent his childhood and adolescence in Galicia and Cadiz, where he began his studies in painting at the School of Fine Arts. There he won several prizes and received commissions such as the one to decorate its Gran Teatro. In 1912 he moved to Barcelona and in his first participation in a National Exhibition of Fine Arts he obtained a third medal. He repeated with a second and a first prize in the editions of 1915 and 1920. He was also awarded in the International Exhibitions of San Francisco (1915) and Panama (1916). His work would continue to be exhibited throughout his life, such as the various solo exhibitions that in the 1930s took him to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Settled in Madrid since 1920, he taught for several years after founding a Free Academy of Art in 1923. Students such as Salvador Dalí passed through it, while he was requested by the Royal House to portray H.M. King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia. The theme of his work was, above all, genre painting and the female portrait, a mixture of costumbrismo and folklore in equal parts. Such was the Mujer con garrafa en la mano that he signed in 1945 to illustrate the UEE calendar and with which, following the iconographic tradition of the collection, he contributed his own vision of the ideal canons of feminine beauty. His talent was recognized with his appointment as director of the School of Fine Arts in 1946 and as an academician of the San Fernando School in Madrid in 1947.