08307 Oil on cardboard, "Scene with figures by the Bisagra Gate in Toledo". Made and signed in the lower right corner by GONZALO BILBAO MARTÍNEZ (Seville, 1860; Madrid, 1938), initialed on the back. A favorable report is attached from Mr. Gerardo Pérez Calero, Professor of Art History at the University of Seville, the foremost authority on the work of Gonzalo Bilbao. Measurements: 34 x 42 cm without frame and 51 x 59 cm with frame. Work included in the book: (Pérez Calero, Gerardo. Gonzalo Bilbao, the painter of the cigar makers. Ed. Tabapress. Madrid, 1989, catalog no. 321) Gonzalo Bilbao began drawing as a child and began his painting career in 1880. During these years, he traveled to Italy and France with Jiménez de Aranda. In Rome, he worked with the painter José Villegas Cordero and traveled to various Italian capitals, painting urban and rural views until his return to Spain in 1884. In the following years, he visited Rome again, traveled throughout Spain, and also traveled to Morocco, Paris, and Munich. In Spain, he worked as a painting teacher, initially privately and, from 1903, succeeding Jiménez de Aranda at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in Seville. In 1904, he married and settled in Madrid, where he continued his teaching work at the San Fernando Academy. During his career he participated in numerous fine art exhibitions, both national and international, being awarded a third medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris (1889) and the International Exposition of Barcelona (1891), a single medal at the Universal Exposition in Chicago (1893), and a gold medal at the International Expositions of Berlin (1899), Munich (1905), Buenos Aires (1910), Santiago de Chile (1910), San Francisco (1915) and Panama (1916). He also participated in the National Fine Arts Exhibitions, obtaining a second medal in 1887 and 1892, a first in 1899 and 1901 and an honorary medal in 1915. A traditional painter, representative of Spanish costumbrismo, his paintings expressed colorful prints of Andalusian life and its most popular characters. He also practiced landscape, figure and portrait painting, painting prominent figures of the time such as King Alfonso XIII and the actress Carmen Díaz. The light and vitality of his compositions bring his language closer to Impressionist aesthetics, focusing on the essential representation of environments and landscapes. Gonzalo Bilbao is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, where he has a room entirely dedicated to his work, the Museo del Prado, the Jaume Morera in Lleida, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Córdoba, among others, as well as in private collections both in Spain and abroad.
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