JOSE RICO CEJUDO (Seville, 1864 - 1943). "Lady... Lot 44

JOSE RICO CEJUDO (Seville, 1864 - 1943). "Lady with mantilla". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner. Measurements: 61 x 38 cm. Born in Seville on March 27, 1864, he entered the Provincial School of Fine Arts as a child, learning from Manuel Wssel, Eduardo Cano and José García Ramos until, in 1887, still a student at the School, he won a cash prize for his painting El niño de la paloma. The following year he moved to Rome with a pension from the City Council of Seville. He remained there until 1895, seeking the guidance of Villegas and Gallegos from Seville and Jerez. He also took the opportunity to travel to Naples and Venice, the latter city of which he made numerous vedute like so many other painters of the Spanish colony in Italy, attracted by the polarizing focus that meant the settlement there of Fortuny's widow, Cecilia Madrazo, and the frequent visits to that "court" of the most prestigious of the fortunianos, such as Martin Rico or Villegas himself. The Italian paintings that Rico Cejudo delivered to the Sevillian City Hall as pension remittances -Una pompeyana (1889), Estudio de desnudo masculino (1889) and La bendición pascual en Roma (1893)- are works that reflect the stupendous resources acquired in Italy: a vigorous and firm drawing, and a sense of color of strong tonalities but sober in nuances, balanced compositions and subjects that, although tending to the anecdotal, possess narrative sincerity. Such qualities survive in his first years after his return to Seville and are manifested in La promesa (1906), which is one of his best works. In those years, specifically from 1897, he also devoted himself to teaching, with drawing classes in engineering, architecture and military preparatory academies, and later, in 1905, color and decorative composition as an assistant at the School of Arts and Industries (which is what the Schools of Fine Arts are called from 1900), reaching the position of assistant professor. Finally, in 1907, he became a full member of the Fine Arts Academy of Santa Isabel de Hungría in Seville. But most of his later production knew a lowering of creativity, with easy-selling issues and little originality, following the prototypes of García Ramos and Gonzalo Bilbao, with the casticismo of the first and the luminist realism of the second. From his participation in official contests we gather, in the National Exhibitions, the one of 1895 with the third of his pensioner shipments, La bendición pascual en Roma, for which he obtained honorable mention; 1897, ¡Pobre huérfana!; 1901, Vicio y remordimiento; 1904, Con achaque de primo, Para la procesión y dos retratos, honorable mention; 1906, La promesa; 1908, Aseo matutino; 1910, retrato de su hija y Estío; 1915, Futuros astros y El aguador; 1920, En la Feria y Floreras, with the second of which he obtained his highest decoration, a third class medal, in addition to its acquisition by the State for 4.000 pesetas; and 1922, Preparando la fiesta and Antes del rosario. His presence in several exhibitions in Seville, Granada and Malaga is also documented, as well as his participation in some of Pinelo's commercial exhibitions in Buenos Aires or the one in Mexico in 1910, where he obtained the only medal. Finally, it is worth mentioning that Rico Cejudo also worked as an illustrator, writer of short novels, author of erudite articles on archaeology and art in the Sevillian newspapers, and even as a flamenco "cantaor" (flamenco singer).