José Denis Belgrano (Málaga, 1844 - 1917). De paseo" ("On a stroll"). Oil on panel. Signed in the lower right corner.

Lot description

JOSÉ DENIS BELGRANO (Málaga, 1844 - 1917). De paseo" ("On a stroll"). Oil on panel. Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 30 x 20 cm; 45 x 36 cm (frame). With the type of scenes like the one we present here, set in an eighteenth-century and aristocratic environment, Denis Belgrano renewed the genre of house painting. A notable exponent of the Malaga school of the second half of the 19th century, much admired and respected in his day and highly valued today, José Denis was born into a bourgeois family and excelled in painting from an early age. His precocious talent attracted the attention of the Marquis of Guadiaro, Carlos Larios, who granted him a pension which enabled him to continue his studies in Rome between 1862 and 1864. Until then he had been self-taught. During his stays in Rome (he made a second trip in 1875) he became acquainted with the work of Mariano Fortuny, whose influence would from then on be very present in his painting. When Bernardo Ferrándiz returned to Malaga, Denis entered the city's School of Fine Arts as his pupil in 1868. On his return from his second trip to Rome, Denis was already a fully established painter. He then received important commissions such as the decoration of the Heredia Palace, the ceiling of the Liceo Artístico in Malaga and a portrait of the Infanta Mercedes of Orleans, the future wife of Alfonso XII. At the same time he held successful exhibitions of his work, both oil paintings and drawings and watercolours, and in 1887 he joined the teaching staff of the San Telmo School of Fine Arts in Malaga, where he was appointed a member in 1910. He also took part in official exhibitions such as the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1887. Denis was particularly noted for his costumbrista themes, although he also produced bullfighting and gallant subjects and portraits. Works by Denis are housed in the Malaga Museum of Fine Arts, the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art in Malaga and the Unicaja Collection.