30/5/23 - Acquisition - Madrid, Museo del Romanticismo - Both a history painter and a portraitist, the Spaniard Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve enjoyed success during his lifetime and led a brilliant career. His work is often compared with that of Federico de Madrazo, whose friend and rival he was, both artists being considered emblematic figures of Spanish Romanticism. They were the focus of a series of lectures on 8, 19 and 20 November 2015 at the palace of the Marquis of Matallana, whose papers were the subject of a digital publication. Is it possible to speak of a specifically Spanish Romanticism? Jean-René Aymes posed the question in a work entitled Voir, comparer, comprendre. Regards sur l’Espagne des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, published in 2003 by Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle.
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- 1. Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve (1815-1891)
Portrait of Emilia Fieve, c. 1850-1864
Oil on canvas - 56 x 45 cm
Madrid, Museo del Romanticismo
Photo: Museo del Romanticismo - See the image in its page
In 2022, the Museo del Romanticismo received a gift from the Friends association of a female portrait painted by Ribera, whose model is none other than the artist’s mother, Emilia Fieve (ill. 1). The painting is an ideal addition to the collection, as it joins another painting by the master, the double portrait of his sister Josefa Ana de Ribera and her husband (ill. 2), Julián Milanésune, preempted on 29 April 2010 at an auction in Madrid, which we had not previously mentioned. Josefa is shown seated in the centre of the composition, while her husband is relegated to the background on the left, as if he had been added later. She adopts a deceptively relaxed posture, sitting in a park, leaning back in the chair. The choice of painting a landscape as a background is relatively rare in Ribera’s portraits. His mother, on the other hand, is presented more soberly in bust form, with no arms visible and a neutral background; the artist has devoted his attention to the expression and features of her face, haloed by a black mantilla whose delicacy and transparency he has managed to convey.
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- 2. Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve (1815-1891)
Portrait of Josefa Ribera and her Husband Julián Milanés, 1849
Oil on canvas - 95 x 76.50 cm
Madrid, Museo del Romanticismo
Photo: Museo del Romanticismo - See the image in its page
The son of the neoclassical painter Juan Antonio Ribera, who was a pupil of David in Paris, Carlos Luis trained first with his father and then at the San Fernando Academy, where he won first prize in 1831 for The Discovery of the South Sea by Vasco Núñez de Balboa. He designed lithographs for the short-lived magazine El Artista, which was founded in 1835 by Federico de Madrazo and died out the following year. Inspired by the French review L’Artiste, it defended and illustrated the values of Romanticism.
Ribera also left for Paris in 1836, where he stayed for nine years. He worked in Paul Delaroche’s studio and exhibited successfully at the Salon. In France, he was reunited with his compatriots, among them the indisputable Madrazo. On his return to Madrid, he became a professor at the Madrid School of Fine Arts in 1845, a member of the San Fernando Academy, which he eventually directed, and was appointed Queen’s Chamber Painter. He was one of the court’s leading portraitists, as demonstrated by another portrait by him, that of the Duchess of Osuna, kept at the Museo del Romanticismo.