EDUARDO ROSALES GALLINAS (Madrid, 1836 - 1873).Sketch of the Death of Lucretia.Oil on canvas.

EDUARDO ROSALES GALLINAS (Madrid, 1836 - 1873).
"Sketch of the Death of Lucretia".
Oil on canvas.
Attached certificate issued by Don Eduardo Rosales, great-grandson of the artist.
It presents slight restorations.
Measurements: 41 x 62 cm; 57 x 73,5 cm (frame).
In 1871, Eduardo Rosales showed his painting entitled "The Death of Lucretia" at the National Exhibition, with which he won the first medal. This piece, which now belongs to the Museo del Prado collection, differs to some extent from this sketch, although it should be noted that the artist prepared numerous compositions in order to achieve a work that could win the medal. In both pieces we can see the artist's interest in setting the scene in an intimate atmosphere. The piece, as the Prado Museum points out, shows "The suicide of the Roman patrician Lucretia after being raped by the son of the king of Rome; an episode that would bring about the end of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Roman Republic in 510 BC and which would be widely disseminated from Neoclassicism onwards as a prime example of virtue and marital fidelity".
Born into a humble family, Eduardo Rosales was trained in the Nazarenism that then dominated the Madrid Academy of Fine Arts, where he entered in 1851 and was a pupil of Federico de Madrazo. Thanks to friends and colleagues, including the painters Palmaroli and Álvarez Catalá, Rosales travelled to Italy by his own means in 1857 in their company. During the trip he visited Bordeaux and Nîmes, where he was impressed by the historical paintings of Léon Cogniet and Paul Delaroche. In Rome he survived with difficulty until he finally obtained a government pension in 1860, which enabled him to produce his first important works. After his first great triumph at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1864, he remained for some time in Madrid, where he painted several portraits, both family and commissioned. In 1865 he travelled to Paris with Martín Rico and Raimundo de Madrazo, and returned there two years later. However, these years of his life were spent mainly in Rome, where he worked intensely before returning to Spain in 1868 following his marriage. During this period he received important aristocratic, religious and governmental commissions, although he was also interested in types and landscapes during his stays in Panticosa and Murcia. Towards the end of his life, after a controversial success at the National Exhibition of 1871, he was proposed as the first director of the newly founded Spanish Academy in Rome in 1873, a post he did not take up as he died. A leading figure in 19th-century Spanish painting, from his earliest works we can recognise a personal style that tends towards a monumental, historicist but at the same time synthetic style, still with cold ranges, in the orbit of Romantic purism. His mature style is forged through a personal interpretation of the pictorial myths of his time, within an international academicism, although dominated by Velázquez, until he reached a completely modern plastic autonomy. Although he worked in portraiture, religious painting, painting of popular types, etc., his artistic career was strongly determined by his success in official exhibitions.