Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta was born into a family engaged in the applied arts (his uncle Daniel was one of the best ceramists of his time). From an early age, he showed his vocation for painting and refused to study to be a mining engineer, the career that his father, Plácido Zuloaga, wanted for him. Zuloaga moved to Madrid, where he spent time copying the masters at the Museo del Prado, and exhibited for the first time at the 1887 National Exhibition. He later travelled to Rome and to Paris, where it seems he was taught by Henri Gervex and formed friendships with the Catalan artists of the modernist group, particularly Ramón Casas and Santiago Rusiñol; he was also a friend of Paul Gauguin, Eugène Carrière and the Nabi Émile Bernard, and exhibited at Le Barc Gallery in Bouteville.

Zuloaga moved to Seville in 1892, attracted by the flamenco culture of bullfighters and dandies, and apparently even took part in a bullfight. In 1898, he discovered the austere allure of Castile and moved into his uncle Daniel’s house in Segovia. His portrait of his uncle and his cousins was a success at the National Salon of Fine Arts in Paris, where he married Valentine Dethomas in 1899. After their honeymoon they divided their time between Paris, Madrid and Segovia. In Paris, the decision by the Spanish committee for inclusion in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 (where Sorolla reped great success) to reject Zuloaga’s On the Eve of the Bullfight greatly disappointed him (1898). Even so, he continued his career as an international painter with exhibitions in Paris, Dresden, Dusseldorf, New York, Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Amsterdam and elsewhere. When war broke out in Europe, Zuloaga returned to Spain and settled in a large house in Zumaia (perhaps similar to the house in Biarritz depicted in a painting in the Banco de España Collection dated 1900), which he turned into a museum with works by Greco, Goya and other artists.

He was awarded the painting medal at the Venice Biennale in 1940. His strong, personal style combines the example of the great masters of the Spanish Baroque, from Greco to Velázquez and particularly Ribera, with Goya’s vigorous affront. Zuloaga’s style is both naturalist and expressionist and his wild, dark Spain was discovered by the Generation of ’98, to which he belonged as a painter.  His portraits (Azorín, Falla, Belmonte, Domingo Ortega, Balenciaga, etc.) show exceptional vigour, while his landscapes stand out for bringing a new impetus to views of the north and Castile. Interesting examples include the View of Madrid sketch in the Banco de España Collection and his study of a typical Basque house in the drawing and wash entitled Large House.

Zuloaga’s work has traditionally been associated with the myth of the Dark Spain, compared to Sorolla’s more cosmopolitan White Spain. Yet recent historiography has shown a more international Zuloaga, analysing his contact with and absorbing of currents beyond those usually cited. Proof of this is the exhibition on the artist’s time in the Paris of the Belle Époque organised by the Mapfre Recoletos Foundation in 2017. The two portraits by Zuloaga in the Banco de España Collection are excellent examples of that cosmopolitan approach.

• María José Alonso
• Carlos Martín
• Julián Gállego Serrano