“Incendio en Roma” SALVADOR SÁNCHEZ-BARBUDO MORALES

SALVADOR SÁNCHEZ-BARBUDO MORALES (Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, 1857 - Rome, 1917).
"Fire in Rome".
Oil on canvas.
Signed and located in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 39 x 65 cm; 68 x 95 cm (frame).
Work reproduced in "Cien años de pintura en España y Portugal (1830-1930)", volume 10, p. 65 (Madrid, Antiqvaria, 1988-1993).
In this work, Sánchez-Barbudo depicts a landscape of contrasting light, with a field in shadow illuminated in the background by the flames of a fire in the city of Rome. It is a distinctly modern landscape, characterised by the contrasting effects of light and by an atmosphere of great naturalism, based on colour applied with mutable brushstrokes, shorter and more precise in some areas, almost invisible in others, and dense and directional in the sky, the silhouettes silhouetted in the background, etc.
Interested in drawing and painting from an early age, Sánchez-Barbudo began his training in the workshop of the restorer Pedro Vera. At the age of nineteen he moved to Seville to study at the Provincial School of Fine Arts, thanks to the support of his protector and patron, the Marquis del Castillo, where he became a pupil of José Villegas. In 1878 he travelled to Madrid to further his training, remaining in the capital for four years. In 1881 he took part in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and was awarded a third-class medal for his work "Un salón de esgrima" ("A Fencing Salon"). The following year he went to Rome with his master. Due to his master's influence, and given that Villegas was a friend of Rosales, Fortuny, Zamacois and others, as well as a painter with a magnificent clientele (Vanderbilt, Stuard, Krupp...), Sánchez-Barbudo was initiated into the fashionable genre, costumbrista historicism (known as casacón subject matter). Fascinated by the artistic atmosphere of the Italian capital, Sánchez-Barbudo decided to settle in Italy and from then on made the city the protagonist of his painting. In addition to the themes of casacons, he also produced small-format paintings of high society scenes and landscapes, and was particularly noted for his portraits. He occasionally sent works to the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts in Madrid. In 1884 he sent to Spain the monumental canvas entitled "Hamlet. Last Scene", with which he won a second medal at the National Exhibition of the same year. He exported his works especially to England, where his historicist genre paintings were extraordinarily well received, and he himself enjoyed a reputation as an exquisite painter. Sánchez-Barbudo showed in his works a perfect mastery of the basics of the genre: a skilful combination of bourgeois naturalism and loosely executed preciosity. His brushstroke is rapid and precise, and he gives the chromaticism a totally personal vibrancy and variety. He worked with small touches, both in the figures and in the scenes, paying special attention to the atmosphere. He was also an excellent watercolourist and engraver. In 1997, an anthological exhibition was dedicated to him, with the participation of the

Obra reproducida en “Cien años de pintura en España y Portugal (1830-1930)”, tomo 10, p. 65 (Madrid, Antiqvaria, 1988-1993). Esta pieza se incluirá en el catálogo razonado del artista "Salvador Sánchez-Barbudo Morales" realizado para el trabajo de Tesis Doctoral de Paloma de los Santos Guerrero, dirigido por el prof. D. Gerardo Pérez Calero (Universidad de Sevilla).