Jenaro Perez Villaamil

Jenaro Pérez Villaamil was a Spanish painter in the Romantic style who specialized in landscapes with figures and architectural scenes. He often inflated the scale of the buildings relative to the figures to make them more impressive. He was born in Ferrol, Galicia, on February 3, 1807. His father was a professor at the military academy in Santiago de Compostela, where he enrolled in 1812. He went to Madrid in 1820 to study at the Reales Estudios de San Isidro (now part of the Colegio Imperial de Madrid). Three years later, he joined the army fighting the French invasion led by the Duke of Angoulême. He was wounded and briefly held as a prisoner of war. Afterwards, he stayed in Cádiz to study at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. In 1830, he went to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with his brother Juan (died 1863), who was also a painter, where they decorated the Teatro Tapia and worked as scenographers for a few years. Upon his return to Spain in 1833, he met the Scottish painter David Roberts, who had a decisive influence on his style. He settled in Madrid in 1834 and became a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando the following year. In 1840, he was named honorary court painter to Queen Isabella II. During the regime of Baldomero Espartero, from 1840 to 1844, he left his wife and young child and lived in self-imposed exile in France and Belgium, using artistic affairs as an excuse for his absence. After travelling through Europe, he returned in 1845 and obtained the chair of landscape painting at the Academia, where he later became the director. He returned to Galicia for an extended stay in 1849 and made extensive travels throughout Spain until 1852, when he began to suffer from liver disease. He died in Madrid on June 5, 1854, aged only forty-seven. He is best known for his Monumental Views of Spanish Cities, a series of 42 views painted on tin plates and assembled by the artist as a diptych with each side terminating in simple, pointed arches supported on columns. The views are remarkable examples of Villaamil’s use of oil when painting outdoors from life. He also published several books on art theory and history, such as España artística y monumental (1842-1850) and Bosquejo histórico y crítico de la pintura en España desde su origen hasta nuestros días (1849). He is considered one of the most important Spanish painters of the Romantic era.¹