LUCAS VELÁZQUEZ, Eugenio

Eugenio Lucas Vel�zquez was the foremost practitioner of Goya’s style in the middle years of the 19th century, as illustrated by the present painting on a favourite theme from Goya’s universe: the world of bullfighting. Lucas inherited Goya’s enthusiasm, reinterpreting diverse aspects of the sport in an absolutely personal language.

The present painting illustrates the tragic moment when a bull attacks the bullfighter, whose gored body lies by the animal’s front legs. The scene takes place during a bullfight in the spacious square of a small village of poorly built, rundown houses next to a poplar grove, whose svelte outline is silhouetted against a clear sky crossed by clouds.

The painting, signed in Madrid in 1855, is from the most accomplished mature period in Eugenio Lucas’s artistic career.

Exaltation of the maja as the female embodiment par excellence of the notion of what was genuinely Spanish was an important aspect of the works of 19th-century painters influenced by the art of Goya. It is therefore a common feature of the painting of Eugenio Lucas Vel�zquez, undoubtedly the most faithful interpreter of the brilliant Aragonese artist’s aesthetic universe in Spanish Romantic painting.

A young maja sits by a river in the open countryside leaning against a rock. She poses calmly, her black hair teased to stand out strikingly in the fashionable style of 1785-90 and adorned with a caramba, a type of satin and lace headdress that was all the rage at the time, albeit among ladies of a certain class, with large bows that dangle behind her neck. Her clothing is equally striking: a short, close-fitting jacket worn open to show off the obvious sensuality of the revealing neckline of her dress, its folds draped suggestively over her body and a wide cummerbund tied around the waist. She wears satin slippers with buckles on her feet and her red shawl has slipped down her back. Beside her a small, woolly-coated dog with an alert, attentive gaze stares straight ahead with its beady, black eyes, immediately capturing the spectator’s attention. Visible on the other side of the river are some herders leading a group of bulls to graze beneath a sweeping cloud-filled twilight sky.

The present painting is unique in the painter’s very prolific career. Its composition and considerable size make it the only as yet known example that bears a close resemblance to Goya’s model immortalised in the Clothed Maja, which it inevitably recalls both in the details of the woman’s clothing and in the attitude of her pose - in this case with a more veiled and restrained provocation - and in the emphasis on picturesque details of her appearance and colourful attire complete with fashionable accessories such as the fan and the flower she holds.

In the gloomy interior of a cave, a priest gives communion to a large number of faithful; in the foreground, two women saying the rosary, their heads covered, appear on the right of the composition, lit by a dramatic white light that silhouettes the figures and grants them a phantasmagoric appearance. Lucas executed this small copper plate swiftly, modelling featureless faces, using superimposed impastos and longer brushstrokes for the white shades in keeping with the formal characteristics of his work.

Although such small-format scenes are very frequent in the painter’s repertoire, the model is taken from Francisco de Goya, to whom Lucas would be especially devoted throughout his career.

Spanish painter of Romanticism. Long known as Eugenio Lucas y Padilla, research has shown that his real surname was Lucas Vel�zquez. He became a painter late in his career, still listing ‘cabinetmaker’ as his profession in 1844; by the mid-1850s he was well-established and finding success in his new career as painter. Lucas Vel�zquez was influenced by Goya, particularly in terms of colour and vigorous brushwork, and is considered a precursor to Impressionism. He may have also been influenced by Delacroix, whom he may have met in Paris, and he apparently knew, and perhaps influenced, Manet.

Although he trained at the Madrid Academy, he was more or less self-taught and his work remained totally unacademic. Isolated from the general art scene, he concentrated in his early oeuvre on impressions of Spanish life. Padilla attracted public attention with dramatically agitated figure paintings. Largely scenes drawn from the revolution, the Inquisition, and bullfighting, these were in part copies, in part free reinterpretations of works by Goya and Vel�zquez.

From June 1808 to 11 February 1809, the Spanish city of Saragossa under General Jose de Palafox y Melzi mounted heroic resistance to a siege by Napoleon’s troops, surrendering only after over half of its inhabitants and defenders had fallen. Scenes from this bloody struggle were depicted in many pictures and leaflets of the day as well as in countless works later in the nineteenth century.