Communication with the purpose of culturally promoting artists included in the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Collection, works protected by intellectual property rights. Their total or partial reproduction or processing by any means, or their transmission or cession in any form is forbidden without the authorisation of the holder of the rights to the works
El primogénito de Antonio Hompanera de Cos
TECHNICAL DATA
Author: Antonio María Esquivel (Sevilla, 1806 – Madrid, 1857)
Title: El primogénito de Antonio Hompanera de Cos (The Eldest Son of Antonio Hompanera de Cos)
Year: 1852
Technique: oil on canvas
Size: 179,5 x 135,5 cm
Esquivel was skilled at painting portraits of children because of the way he was able to imbue their attitude and facial features with charm; he painted them in a slightly idealised fashion, thanks to his technique of using light layers of paint that he learned in his training in Seville. Here he depicts a boy around 13 or 14 years old in front of a Neogothic-inspired Elizabethan chair upholstered in red velvet; the boy is elegantly attired in black with gold buttons and fob, a white waistcoat and shirt, a blue tie and a pearl on his shirtfront. In this era, it was common for the sons of bourgeois families to be trained in drawing. Thus, the boy is showing a copy in his left hand, and several implements related to drawing are in his right hand and lying on the table: a mechanical pencil, a Conté crayon, a penknife and a wooden box holding two mechanical pencils. Just as in other paintings by this artist, the background is always treated as a stage, here with curtains before a low wall with a large vase on the left and a riverine landscape behind it.
The painting was acquired at Subastas Segre on 23 May 2017 (lot 97).