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Lot description
EDUARDO ROSALES GALLINAS (Madrid, 1836 - 1873). "Sketch of the New Testament". Pencil and gouache drawing on paper. Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 32 x 44 cm; 49 x 62 cm (frame). Born in the bosom of a humble family, Eduardo Rosales was formed in the nazarenism that at that time dominated the Academy of Fine Arts of Madrid, where he entered in 1851 and was a pupil of Federico de Madrazo. Thanks to friends and colleagues, including the painters Palmaroli and Álvarez Catalá, Rosales travelled to Italy by his own means in 1857 in their company. During the trip he visited Bordeaux and Nîmes, where he was impressed by the historical paintings of Léon Cogniet and Paul Delaroche. In Rome he survived with difficulty until he finally obtained a government pension in 1860, which enabled him to produce his first important works. After his first great triumph at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1864, he remained for some time in Madrid, where he painted several portraits, both family and commissioned. In 1865 he travelled to Paris with Martín Rico and Raimundo de Madrazo, and returned there two years later. However, these years of his life were spent mainly in Rome, where he worked intensely before returning to Spain in 1868 following his marriage. During this period he received important aristocratic, religious and governmental commissions, although he was also interested in types and landscapes during his stays in Panticosa and Murcia. Towards the end of his life, after a controversial success at the National Exhibition of 1871, he was proposed as the first director of the newly founded Spanish Academy in Rome in 1873, a post he did not take up as he died. A leading figure in 19th-century Spanish painting, from his earliest works we can recognise a personal style that tended towards a monumental, historicist but at the same time synthetic style, still with cold ranges, in the orbit of Romantic purism. His mature style is forged through a personal interpretation of the pictorial myths of his time, within an international academicism, although dominated by Velázquez, until he reached a completely modern plastic autonomy. Although he worked in portraiture, religious painting, painting of popular types, etc., his artistic career was strongly determined by his success in official national and international exhibitions of history painting. Thus, at the National Exhibition of 1864 he won the first medal for "Doña Isabel la Católica dictando su testamento" ("Doña Isabel la Católica dictating her will"), one of the most important paintings of the genre in Spain, a canvas which was also awarded a prize at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867, where he was awarded the Legion of Honour. He won the same award again in 1871 for "Muerte de Lucrecia" ("Death of Lucrecia"), a bold work of disconnected brushstrokes and vibrant execution. Rosales is widely represented in the Museo del Prado, as well as in other important art galleries and in important private collections.