# Emilio Sala artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/emilio-sala/
Profile generated: 2026-05-30T22:29:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1850-01-20
- Death date: 1910-04-14
- Nationality: Spanish
- Movements: Spanish academic painting, late 19th-century realism
- Common media: oil on canvas, illustration (print)

## About Emilio Sala

Emilio Sala y Francés (1850–1910) was a Spanish painter and illustrator born in Alcoy, Alicante, who worked chiefly in Madrid. He is best known for portraits—particularly of female subjects—and genre paintings that capture the refined interiors and fashions of late nineteenth-century Spanish society. Working within the academic realist tradition, Sala developed a careful attention to texture, fabric, and light that reflects both Spanish academic training and broader European currents of the period. In addition to easel paintings, he produced illustrations for contemporary publications. Sala also taught, counting the painter Pierre Ribera among his students. His works appear in Spanish museum collections and have been offered at international auction, with 193 lots recorded in major databases.

## Common works and media

Sala's most commonly encountered works are oil paintings, especially female portraits and genre scenes depicting elegant domestic interiors. He also produced illustrations for printed publications. Subjects frequently include fashionable women, domestic life, and social gatherings rendered with detailed attention to costume, setting, and light. Works are typically found as medium-to-large format canvases dating from the 1870s through the first decade of the twentieth century.

## Market and appraisal context

Works by Emilio Sala y Francés appear at auction primarily as oil-on-canvas paintings, with female portraits and genre scenes the most frequently offered categories. Valuation depends on the quality of the sitter's rendering, compositional complexity, paint-surface condition, provenance documentation, and secure attribution. Larger, more detailed compositions tend to attract stronger interest. Sala's market is concentrated in Spain and among collectors of nineteenth-century European academic painting. Buyers should note that attribution can be uncertain for unsigned or undocumented works, and professional condition reports are advisable given the age of these paintings. Auction records are modest relative to more prominent Spanish painters of the same era.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research from museum, library authority, and scholarly sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available.

## Sources

- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/69340
- VIAF (OCLC): https://viaf.org/viaf/86924213/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500022487
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q521733
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Sala_(painter)
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2011098035