Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta | Genre painter | Tutt'Art@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica

Biography from: Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga

Born in Rome on 24 July 1841 and christened at the church of San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (24 July 1841 - 15 September 1920) was a pupil of his father Federico and his grandfather José de Madrazo.

He also studied at the San Fernando Academy under Carlos Luis Ribera and Carlos de Haes, among others.

In 1862 he took up residence in Paris, where he was a pupil of the painter Léon Coignet.

Throughout his lifetime he took part in a variety of exhibitions, although he never needed to submit works to the National Exhibitions in Madrid as he enjoyed huge prestige from a very early age owing to his surname and, above all, his outstanding painting skills.

Madrazo produced a few history paintings, such as the Cortes de 1834, for the palace of Queen María Cristina of Bourbon in Paris, and a huge number of paintings of interiors and genre scenes for the international market in an impeccable précieux style influenced by his brother-in-law Mariano Fortuny.

As a young man he was even entrusted with the fresco decoration for the façades of the church of Las Calatravas in Madrid, which has practically disappeared now.

He was also one of the most accomplished portraitists of his generation and a worthy successor of his father Federico de Madrazo.

His style has a touch of painstaking, elegant realism that is sometimes frivolous but executed with an irresistible decorative instinct that was the key to his success with the bourgeois clientele of his day, and always coupled with an absolute mastery of painterly devices and a delicate, highly refined palette.

Madrazo’s oeuvre enjoyed great recognition in France, where he won a first-place medal and was officially decorated with the Legion of Honour award or his participation in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, as well as in the United States and Argentina, to which he travelled on several occasions.

He died in Versailles on 15 September 1920. | José Luis Díez © Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga, España

Biography from: Museo Nacional del Prado

Madrazo y Garreta, Raimundo de (Rome (Italy), 24.7.1841 - Versailles (France), 15.9.1920).

After preliminary studies with his grandfather and father, portrait painters José and Federico de Madrazo, Raimundo attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where his fellow students included Martín Rico, Rosales and Palmaroli, among others. He soon left for Paris, which became his primary residence from then on. There his work received the early but decisive influence of French academicism.

While he studied with Léon Cogniet (1794-1880), close contact with his father-in-law, Mariano Fortuny, was crucial in his work’s move towards bourgeois realism.

At the beginning of his career, he made history paintings to establish his academic bona fides—The Death of Don Lope de Haro at las Cortes de Alfaro (New York, the Hispanic Society of America) and The Arrival in Spain of the Body of Saint James the Apostle (Seville, private collection) - but he also received some important commissions, including a ceiling for the palace of the Duke of Riánsares in Paris.

This work was related to the large canvas conceived by Fortuny that depicted Marie Christine’s Vow in 1833. He also painted especially brilliant tableautin scenes that clearly reflect Fortuny’s influence.

During the Franco-Prussian War Raimundo de Madrazo aided the Red Cross in its work in Paris, and his true professional ascent began shortly thereafter, with exhibitions in the most important London and Paris galleries and the acquisition of his art, which was very close to Fortuny’s, by major bourgeois collectors throughout Europe and America.

His only son, Cocó de Madrazo (1875-1934) was born in 1875, and he, too, became a painter.

As Raimundo’s life grew increasingly sophisticated and exquisite he began to weave a network of cosmopolitan friends that included all of the leading figures in Paris’s grand monde, most of whom appear in his portraits.

And so, while he also worked in other genres, Raimundo de Madrazo’s greatest success and international renown came from his extraordinary capacity to portray the socially privileged in an elegant and refined manner. Among the Spanish elite, he portrayed The Duchess of Alba (Madrid, Liria Palace), Queen Marie Christine of Austria (Paris, Spanish Embassy) and The Marquis of Casa Riera (Madrid, Fundación Carlos de Amberes), but he also painted likenesses of other Europeans, such as the Marchioness of Hervey (Paris, Musée d’Orsay); Latin Americans, including Josefa Manzanedo e intentas, II Marchioness of Manzanedo, and North Americans such as the President of the United States’ half-brother and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft (Cincinnati, Taft Museum).

And, of course, he painted his friends, including Ramón de Errazu.

Still, many of Raimundo de Madrazo’s best-known paintings are anecdotal genre scenes whose central figure is Aline Masson, his model for over fifteen years.

Dressed or nude, sporting a white mantilla or disguised as a “Pierrette”, she appears in many of Madrazo’s more commercial works, most of which are frivolous in their subject matter but extremely well executed, fresh and sensual.

These paintings seem to capture her lively, smiling youth with an awareness of the unsustainable decadence of late-bourgeois realism.

Raimundo had been living in Versailles since 1910, accompanied by his wife, María Hahn, who was also the brother of well-known musician Reynaldo Hahn.

His work was exhibited at the world’s leading galleries and following his death, the Royal Academy of London, of which he was a member, held an exhibition to honor his memory (G. Navarro, C. in: El siglo XIX en el Prado, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007, pp. 478-479).

His portrait by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz at the Museo del Prado is catalogued as P07662. | Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (Roma, 24 giugno 1841 - Versailles, 15 settembre 1920) è stato un pittore Spagnolo, ritrattista, esponente della terza generazione di una famiglia di pittori figurativi tra i più rappresentativi del XIX secolo.

Famiglia

Il padre era il famoso pittore Federico de Madrazo e il nonno paterno l'altrettanto famoso pittore neoclassico José de Madrazo, dei quali fu allievo così come suo fratello Ricardo anch'egli pittore. Anche gli zii paterni Luis e Pedro erano pittori di successo. Suo cognato era il famoso pittore spagnolo Mariano Fortuny con cui condivise soggiorno e esperienze artistiche in Francia.

Anche suo figlio Federico de Madrazo Ochoa (1874-1935) seguì con successo le sue orme artistiche.

Formazione

Completati gli studi artistici presso la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando dove ebbe come maestri Carlos Luis de Ribera e Carlos de Haes, a diciannove anni, nel 1860, si trasferì a Parigi dove fu allievo del pittore Léon Cogniet e dove anche fu influenzato dal pittore belga Alfred Stevens suo amico.

Carriera

A Parigi, suo luogo d'elezione, trascorse gran parte della vita facendo numerosi viaggi a New York dove le sue opere trovarono un ricco mercato di estimatori.

A contatto con l'ambiente artistico cosmopolita parigino la sua arte si affrancò dai rigori accademici classici della sua prima formazione per approdare ad uno stile delicato e sofisticato, soprattutto nei ritratti, che furono molto apprezzati sia in Francia che negli Stati Uniti d'America, dove i maggiori collezionisti si contendevano a peso d'oro le sue opere, mentre in Spagna non partecipò a nessuna esposizione.

Nel 1882 con Giuseppe De Nittis, Stevens ed il gallerista Georges Petit, fondò la Esposizione Internazionale di Pittura con la finalità di promuovere gli artisti stranieri a Parigi.

Nel 1889 fu insignito della Legion d'onore in riconoscimento della sua partecipazione alla Esposizione Internazionale di quell'anno.

Nel 1894 donò al Museo del Prado di Madrid alcuni cartoni realizzati da Francisco Goya per le tappezzerie reali fra cui quello intitolato “Cani e strumenti di caccia”.