Born in Toral de los Guzmanes (León) on 2 February 1788, José María was the sole male heir of a lineage raised to the nobility by Charles III for their fidelity to the Bourbons during the War of the Spanish Succession. Later accruing the Leonese surname of Quiñones de León, they ran entailed estates among the valleys of Omaña, Luna and Babia. The sitter’s origins locate this portrait on his lands in León, where his economic and political rise began, and where he established himself as a powerful local figure who was even involved in litigation with the royally appointed mayor and councillors.

Although he collaborated with the resistance against the French invasion, Quiñones did not really begin his political career until the Constitutional Triennium, when he forged ties with the Finance Minister of the time, Felipe Sierra Pambley (1774-1823), also a Leonese. Sierra had him appointed as a clerk in the Secretariat of the Finance Ministry. As Aguado Cabezas has observed, he proceeded in the manner of a landowner and a noted liberal, opposed to anything that might restrict free economic activity. According to the same author, his political and economic activities were mediated by his comfortable position, free of the debts of the great aristocrats and so unburdened by leases and loans. He was therefore able to concentrate on a career in the public administration that allowed him to profit from his own private activities. He selectively bought former Church estates and exploited them on what may be regarded as model nineteenth-century economic lines, always attentive to the privileged information he gained thanks to his influence at court, and also careful to preserve his predominance in the region of León. There he also practised a strict form of local protectionism, likewise a model of its kind, which allowed him to control the press and the local authorities, shielding himself from criticism of his political actions and his responsibility for various irregularities.

During his phase as a member of parliament under the Royal Statute (1834-1836), he distinguished himself by his support for the most forward-looking political and administrative proposals aimed directly at the conclusion of the Ancien Régime. From 1835, he was the director of Provincial Revenues, aligning himself with moderate liberalism. He was appointed Finance Minister for the three months’ duration of the Duke of Frías’s government, afterwards returning to the civil service as head of the State Revenue Office and Secretariat without ever abandoning his political activity in both León (where he became the leader of the moderate liberal party) and Madrid. In 1845, he was once more elected to parliament as deputy for the province of León, and in 1847 he joined the Upper Chamber as a life senator. He died in Madrid on 25 January 1853.

Dressed as a State Councillor, the Marquis is adorned with the Grand Cross and sash of a knight of the Order of Charles III. For this portrait, Vicente López used a model that shows a three-quarterlength view of the figure, who stands next to a table with his body turned to his left to regard the painter. This is a common type of representation that he often used to portray the senior functionaries of Ferdinand VII’s reign. It was successful at the time, and he was almost the only artist who continued to use it under Isabella II.

With his mastery now consolidated, López makes his sitter expressive of restrained elegance both in the pose, with the hands resting naturally on the table and on his thigh, and in the psychological penetration, with Quiñones’s face transmitting both the aristocratic aloofness of his character and the lassitude of his 56 years. This elegance is emphasised by the figure’s static body and by the monumental sense of the composition. Painted with López’s habitual facility for rendering the textures of fabrics and the most ductile surfaces, the right-hand lapel of the Marquis’s coat is deliberately left open so that its lining will contrast delicately with the light playing on the blonde lace frills of his shirt, whose monumental line of ruffles is continued by the creases in the Caroline sash to form the pivot of the decorative details of the image.

A reduced version of this portrait showing the bust is preserved at Peralada Castle (Gerona).

Carlos González Navarro