Spanish school; 19th century

Spanish school; 19th century "Portrait of a lady. Oil on canvas. Measurements: 29 x 24 cm. With a melancholic and reflexive look, the author presents us in this work, a young woman. The lady has her bust with her body turned slightly in three quarters, including her face. With fine, rounded features, her clothes, though sober, indicate that she belongs to a well-to-do social class. The fur coat and gold earrings, together with the lace trimming at the collar of the coat, show us a young woman, calm, tranquil and free of financial worries. As in the rest of Europe, in the 19th century portraiture became the leading genre par excellence in Spanish painting as a result of the new social structures that were established in the Western world during that century, embodying the ultimate expression of the transformation in the taste and mentality of the new clientele that emerged among the nobility and the wealthy gentry, who were to take the reins of history in this period. While official circles gave precedence to other artistic genres, such as history painting, and the incipient collectors encouraged the profusion of genre paintings, portraiture was in great demand for paintings intended for the more private sphere, as a reflection of the value of the individual in the new society. This genre embodies the permanent presence of the image of its protagonists, to be enjoyed in the privacy of a studio, in the everyday warmth of a family cabinet or presiding over the main rooms of the house.