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Lot description
ULPIANO CHECA (Colmenar de Oreja, Madrid, 1860 - Dax, France, 1916). "Thoughtful young man". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower left corner. Measurements: 32,5 x 46,5 cm; 49 x 63 cm (frame). Ulpiano Checa offers us a poetic and bucolic image inspired in the Classical Antiquity. A young man in robes, seated by the sea, gazes into the distance. Beside him rests an object that could well appear to be a lyre, which would turn our protagonist into Orpheus. Ulpiano Checa began his artistic training in 1873 at the Madrid School of Arts and Crafts. In 1876 he enrolled at the San Fernando Academy, where he became a pupil of Federico de Madrazo. On completing his studies, in 1884, he obtained a grant to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome. During his third year he sent a work that won him the first medal at the National Exhibition of 1887 and the second at the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1888. At the end of 1887 he took up residence in Paris, where he exhibited regularly at the Salons, achieving success when his work was awarded a prize in 1890. There he combined painting with his work as a graphic correspondent for "La Ilustración Española y Americana". At the beginning of the century he settled in the south of France, in Dax, where he remained until his death in 1916. It is important to note how Checa's work influenced the adventure films of Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s. Film directors such as Stanley Kubrick ("Spartacus"), Mario Bonnard ("The Last Days of Pompeii"), Mervyn LeRoy ("Quo Vadis"), William Wyler ("Ben-Hur") and, more recently, Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") were inspired by his works for their set designs, costumes, mass movement studies and characterisation of characters. In fact, he also influenced earlier filmmakers, since in the 1930s and 1940s his work showed directors the possibility of creating visual effects of depth and perspective hitherto unheard of in cinema. During his lifetime, in 1901, he collaborated with Henry Sienkiewick on the set and costume design for the theatrical version of the novel "Quo Vadis". In fact, part of Checa's work is based on literature, especially this novel, "Ben-Hur" and "Les Miserables". Works by Ulpiano Checa are kept in the Museo Municipal Ulpiano Checa in Colmenar de Oreja, the Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, among others.