Vicente López Portaña, OIC (; September 19, 1772July 22, 1850) was a Spanish painter, considered one of the best portrait painters of his time.

Early life

Vicente López Portaña was born in

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

on September 19, 1772. His parents were Cristóbal López Sanchordi and Manuela Portaña Meer. Vicente López began formally studying painting in Valencia at the age of thirteen, he was a disciple of father Antonio de Villanueva, a Franciscan

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

, and he studied at the

Academy of San Carlos The Academy of San Carlos ( es, Academia de San Carlos) is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as th ...

in his native city. He was seventeen when he won first prize in drawing and coloring receiving a scholarship to study in the prestigious Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

. For the following three years in Madrid, he apprenticed with the Valencian painter,

Mariano Salvador Maella Mariano Salvador Maella Pérez (21 August 1739 – 10 May 1819) was a Spanish painter known primarily for his portraits and religious frescoes. Biography Maella was born in Valencia. His artistic education began with his father, who was al ...

. Vicente López returned to Valencia in 1794 and subsequently became vice-director of painting at the Academy where he had studied as a boy. In 1795 he married Maria Piquer, they had two sons:

Bernardo Bernardo is a given name and less frequently an Italian, Portuguese and Spanish surname. Possibly from the Germanic "Bernhard". Given name People * Bernardo the Japanese (died 1557), early Japanese Christian convert and disciple of Saint Fra ...

and

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

, who were also painters, following their father's style but with little accomplishments. In 1801 López was named President of the Academy of San Carlos.

Court painter

When king Charles IV visited the city of Turia in 1802, the king appointed him an honorary

court painter A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or princely family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Painters were the most common, but the cour ...

at the same time he gave him some commissions that he executed successfully. He was already well known and regarded when in 1814 López was called to the court of Ferdinand VII, the Spanish king, who appointed him official court painter and received a royal appointment. Shortly thereafter he succeeded

Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

as Royal Court Painter during the reign of

Ferdinand VII , house = Bourbon-Anjou , father = Charles IV of Spain , mother = Maria Luisa of Parma , birth_date = 14 October 1784 , birth_place = El Escorial, Spain , death_date = , death_place = Madrid, Spain , burial_plac ...

, who also appointed him as drawing teacher of his second wife, Maria Isabella of Portugal, and later of his third wife,

Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony (Maria Josepha Amalia Beatrix Xaveria Vincentia Aloysia Franziska de Paula Franziska de Chantal Anna Apollonia Johanna Nepomucena Walburga Theresia Ambrosia; 6 December 1803 – 18 May 1829) was Queen of Spain as th ...

. In 1817 he was named President of the

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...

. Vicente López was a prolific painter executing many religious, allegorical, historic and mythological scenes, but he specialized in portraits. During his long career he painted nearly every notable person in Spain during the first half of the 1800s. In 1826, López painted a portrait of

Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

when the famous master visited the court from

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

, where the Aragonese painter was then living. Goya was then 80 and would die two years later. It was said that Goya got bored posing for his colleague who was very meticulous and a stickler for detail, and that for this reason the portrait is inferior to others by López. However, for this precise reason, and because of the strong personality of the model this is one of López's most lively and best-known works. Vicente López Portaña - el pintor Francisco de Goya

Vicente López Portaña - el pintor Francisco de Goya

Vicente López spent the remainder of his life in Madrid painting portraits of statesmen, academics, and other important figures, as well as dramatic and emotional religious subjects. When he died, in Madrid, he was court painter of Queen

Isabella II Isabella II ( es, Isabel II; 10 October 1830 – 9 April 1904), was Queen of Spain from 29 September 1833 until 30 September 1868. Shortly before her birth, the King Ferdinand VII of Spain issued a Pragmatic Sanction to ensure the successio ...

. He was seventy eight years old.

Style

Vicente López was a Neo-classicist painter but he retained certain traces of the

Rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

style. He had the Neo-classical emphasis on masterly drawing, though with less rigidity. López is considered the best Spanish painter of his time, second only to

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

. One of his rivals was Agustín Esteve Marqués. López's style is dominated by the influence of

Anton Raphael Mengs Anton Raphael Mengs (22 March 1728 – 29 June 1779) was a German people, German painter, active in Dresden, Rome, and Madrid, who while painting in the Rococo period of the mid-18th century became one of the precursors to Neoclassicism, Neoclas ...

and the Academicism, and he was unaffected by romanticism popular at the end of his career. López was very skilled in drawing and using the brush, but he did not achieve the level of genius that Goya did. His best works are probably his drawings and small-scale paintings.

References

*Vicente López Portaña (1772–1850). ''Su vida, su arte, su obra''.(pinturas, dibujos y estampas), by José Luis Diez García, Alfonso E Pérez Sánchez - 1994 Vicente López by E. M Aguilera *
Scholarly articles
in English about Vicente López Portaña both in web an
PDF
@ th
Spanish Old Masters Gallery

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopez Portana, Vicente Spanish people of English descent Spanish people of Dutch descent Spanish people of Flemish descent 1772 births 1850 deaths People from Valencia 18th-century Spanish painters 18th-century Spanish male artists Spanish male painters 19th-century Spanish painters 19th-century Spanish male artists Painters from the Valencian Community Court painters