Both these works have certificates stuck to their backs in which Manuel Gómez Moreno attributes them to Eugenio Lucas Velázquez. Doubt has been cast on this attribution, with other names posited including Genaro Pérez Villaamil and Francisco Lameyer, whose works often feature landscapes with fantastic, rocky settings as backdrops for scenes in an Eastern style. There can, however, be no doubt as to the quality of these works and the skill of their artist in handling mass and colour.

More recently, Enrique Arias Anglés again asserted that they were by Lucas. Further confirmation can be found in other works that bear his signature, such as River Landscape with Harbour and Figures (National Library, Madrid), dated 1866, which shows a rounded rock very similar to that in Moors in a Mountainous Landscape. Great rocks of this type are practically a calling card of Spanish Romantic landscape painting, especially of the works of Eugenio Lucas. They also appear in works by Pérez Villaamil, such as Rocky Castle (Lázaro Galdiano Foundation, Madrid), but are found most abundantly in those of Eugenio Lucas, where their origins can be traced. They started out as depictions of ruined castles on hilltops or overlooking harbours, e.g. in Fishermen below a Castle, but over time they morphed into rock formations. The work owned by the Banco de España still has the look of a hybrid between a ruin and a natural rock, similar to the one that appears in River Landscape with Harbour and Figures.

Another feature that links these works by Lucas with those of Pérez Villaamil is the technique used, which harks back to the so-called 'Cozens method', devised by British artist Alexander Cozens. Blots are first placed more or less at random across the surface of the painting. These act as the basis for volumes and masses which in turn give rise to fantastic landscapes with creative dynamics that lead to atmospheric effects often playing a prominent role. Here, Lucas Velázquez first creates his landscapes using the said method and then turns them into scenes populated by figures which are seen basically in terms of mass.

To 'animate' these landscapes, he turns to imagery particularly loved by Romantic artists: the world of the Orient. In Spain, this was one of the favourite themes of Pérez Villaamil. Some believe that Lucas Velázquez may have travelled to Morocco in 1859, but there is no evidence of this. He did, however, produce two oriental-themed works that year, so this is presumably a theme that he was cultivating at the time. It was a type of theme that lent itself well to his working methods: he sought to make the most of the broad possibilities offered by ochres and yellows in his landscapes, creating dry, rocky settings that were well suited as backdrops to scenes reminiscent of North Africa. On the other hand the idea of the 'caravan', which is closely linked to that region, offered him compositional advantages, as can be seen in Caravan in a Stormy Landscape. Without the figures, this landscape would be somewhat shapeless, with no sense to the succession of planes depicted, especially in the foreground and at the foot of the mountain. But adding the figures achieves two things: on the one hand their distribution across the painting helps to articulate the setting and create perspective; and on the other the difference in scale between the figures in the foreground and those in the background gives the composition a sense of space and distance. In his depictions of these figures and masses, Lucas Velázquez shows himself to be a virtuoso who knows how to make the most of rapid brush-strokes in descriptive terms, and who sees the 'blot' as a fundamental concept.

The masses in Moors in a Mountainous Landscape serve a similar purpose, though in this case the setting is as structurally important as the rounded rocks. Lucas's deftly descriptive brush-strokes show men mounted on horses and camels, and a camp filled with tents of different colours. There is a feeling of mass and movement that animates the whole scene.

Although the technique, format and theme are similar in the two works, the use of colour is different. In Caravan in a Stormy Landscape the artist exploits the contrast between the ochre blots that fill the foreground and the background landscape, which is painted in different shades and intensities of blue: the deep blue of the sea and the lighter blues mixed wth grey of the sky, where clouds are gathering for a storm. The other painting is based on browns and yellows, and has a marked consistency of tone. The background is an evening sky, with clouds adding a dramatic touch. In painting the land, Lucas uses blacks and the occasional touch of green, running from the bottom right corner to the top left and helping to create perspective and frame the scene.

Javier Portús