RAIMUNDO DE MADRAZO Y GARRETA Austin Museum of Art THE MODERN MASTERS SERIES
July 1-31, 2010 Major Works Austin Museum of Art 823 Congress Avenue Austin, Texas 78767
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ecause of his ability and training with his father, Federico, in the Real Academia de S Fernando in Madrid and with Léon Cogniet in Paris, he seemed destined to continue the family tradition of academic painting. However, due to the influence of the Belgian Alfred Stevens, of his brother-in-law, Mariano José Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal, and the Parisian environment, Madrazo y Garreta exchanged dry historical painting (e.g. Arrival in Spain of the Body of the Apostle St James, 1858, and Ataulfo, 1860) for the preciousness of the tableautin, the small, intimate genre painting. Madrazo y Garreta lived in Paris and New York and became so remote from Spanish artistic life that he and Fortuny y Marsal were the only Spanish artists not to participate in any national exhibition, and because of this the Spanish state never directly acquired their paintings. In 1882, with Giuseppe De Nittis, Stevens and the gallery owner Georges Petit, Madrazo y Garreta co-founded the Exposition Internationale de Peinture, designed to promote foreign artists in Paris. Madrazo Garreta’s most characteristic paintings are the female portrait and the witty and elegant genre painting, with soft, delicate tones and suggestive poses.