Agustín Esteve y Marqués was born into a family of artists that included altarpiece designers, sculptors and engravers. He began training in his home town of Valencia under sculptor Ignacio Vergara. In 1768 he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia, where he won the First Prize awarded monthly by the school. He also worked at the studio of painter José Vergara.

In 1770 he moved to court and joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where he won the general First Prize in class three in 1772. He also frequented the studio of Franisco Bayeu, where he was influenced by Anton Raphael Mengs as can be seen in his works. Under the direction of Bayeu he copied several paintings from the royal collection, showing a preference for the work of Murillo from the outset. He continued to work as a copyist throughout his life, alternating this facet with the production of sketches for engravings and other commissions of a religious nature from the late 1770s onwards.

A few portraits from that period are attributed to him, but his first signed portraits date from the mid 1780s, when he began to stand out in the genre. Records show that he worked in the service of some of the most important families of the nobility, including those of the Duke of Osuna, the Duke of Montemar and the Count of Altamira.

In 1789 he began a productive collaboration with Francisco de Goya when the latter was appointed court painter. Esteve helped him paint his portraits of Charles IV and Marie Louise of Parma on the occasion of the king's proclamation. This collaboration continued at least until 1799, and was crucial for Esteve as it brought him a number of other commissions, including some that Goya had to decline due to ill health. Above all, it enabled him to develop his style of painting. He was always interested in drawing, and showed a painstaking love of detail and a clear, consistent use of light reminiscent of neo-classical painting, but he began to use looser brush-strokes, to leave his preparatory work visible and to acquire a more naturalistic sense of light. In that period he also became a sort of 'official copyist' of Goya, producing several replicas of portraits by the latter, either directly or through the mediation of Goya himself. It was also thanks to Goya that Esteve began to paint portraits in miniature.

His most productive period as a portrait artist ran from the mid 1790s through to the 1810s. At that time he was considered as second only to Goya as the most outstanding portrait artist at court. He painted the most important personages of Madrid society of the time, from kings through ministers, nobles, clerics, military officers to intellectuals and fellow artists. In general, the prevailing interest was to highlight elements that underlined the social standing and position of his sitters, but he depicted them all with dignity and elegance and some came back to him more than once.

On 14 June 1800 he was appointed court artist, and on 22 September that same year he was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia.

During the reign of Joseph I Bonaparte he painted several portaits of the king and of renowned pro-French personages. Although no proof could be provided that he had collaborated with the Bonaparte government, he was affected by the purge that followed the restoration of Ferdinand VII. However, he maintained his post as court painter and produced several portraits of the royal family, plus other works.

In 1815 his sight began to fail. Two years later he drew up a will in which he declared himself to be unmarried, and in 1819 he asked to be allowed to retire on grounds of ill health. He was awarded retirement on full pay for his work as a 'worthy teacher'. In July 1820 he returned to Valencia, where he died. The exact date of his death is not known.

The only monographic examination of his work to date is that written by Martín S. Soria in 1957. Further studies are now reassessing his merits and seeking to list his full catalogue, reattributing to him works traditionally attributed to Goya.

Virginia Albarrán Martín

Cabarrús was a noted dignitary in the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV. He was a specialist who wrote on matters of economic policy as part of the second generation of the Enlightenment in Spain. He also designed financial projects, and as such created the bonds known as vales reales in 1780, during the war with Britain, and founded the Banco Nacional de San Carlos, the first bank authorised to issue bank-notes in Spain. In 1790 he fell out of political and social favour. He was later rehabilitated by prime minister Godoy after several years of serious problems which were never fully clarified, but which included trial and imprisonment.

He was born in Bayonne in 1752, to a family of traders and seafarers that hailed originally from Navarre. In 1771 he travelled to Valencia to learn about trade in Spain at the firm of Antonio Galavert. Shortly afterwards he secretly married Galavert's fourteen-year-old daughter Maria Antonia, a match opposed by both their families. They had a daughter named Teresa and two sons.

In 1772 he moved to Carabanchel de Arriba, a village near Madrid, where Pierre Galavert, a relative of his wife's, owned a soap factory. Records of bills of trade and permits for the export of silver coins show that in 1775 he was doing business with the firm of Viuda de Lalanne e Hijos. He went into partnership with Jean Aguirre, a trader in wool and treasurer of the Canal Imperial de Aragón. The transactions that they did together included the exporting of wool to France and Britain. He also worked with Le Couteulx, one of the biggest firms engaged in trade between Cadiz, Rouen and París.

His growing prosperity as a trader and banker brought him into contact with the followers of the Enlightenment and thus into the main circles of power. He joined the Economic Society of Madrid in 1776. At its informal meetings, held at the home of Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, he met Jovellanos, with whom he struck up a friendship that lasted until the time of the Peninsular War. Cabarrús was much more highly educated than was usual among the traders and bankers of the time. He strove to rise above the world of commerce and join ideological and political elite.

In 1779 Spain and France went to war with Britain over the American War of Independence. The government soon found itself in need of funds to pay for the war, as a British naval blockade had reduced remittances from the Indies and the amount of cash in circulation in Spain had fallen sharply. Cabarrús came up with the idea of vales reales: a hybrid between government bonds and paper money. He convinced the Count of Gausa, who was Treasury Minister at the time, to issue these bonds for three purposes: to bring in revenue for the treasury, to serve as a means of payment for the public (in large-scale operations at least) and to provide their owners with interest at an attractive rate of 4% per annum. There were three issues during the reign of Charles III: in 1780, 1781 and 1782. With his initiative and powers of conviction, Cabarrús managed to persuade some major players to involve themselves in the operation: mostly French trading houses operating in Madrid and Cadiz.

Uncertainty concerning the outcome of the war led to a drop in the traded value of vales reales towards the end of 1782. The Banco Nacional de San Carlos was founded in June that same year. It was the result of the personal efforts of Cabarrús to set up an official lender in the form of a joint-stock company. Its functions included the issuing of bank-notes, the prepayment of funds to the state (mainly concerned with the administration of provisions for the army), the provision of credit to cover the expenses of the monarchy abroad and the discounting and negotiating of bills with private individuals. A further objective was the funding of public works projects, but the main purpose was to pay for vales reales in silver. In 1784 the Banco de San de Carlos was granted a monopoly on silver mining, which brought substantial profits. In 1785 it obtained the contract to create the Compañía de Filipinas, in which it made a major investment. Both these projects went against the policy of economic liberalism that Cabarrús advocated. Between 1780 and 1790 Cabarrús became one of the most socially and economically influential individuals in Madrid outside the circles of Spain's grandees, but he also began to become unpopular. Various factors came together to undermine his success.

Following the death of Charles III in 1789, treasury minister Lerena, a personal enemy of Cabarrús, urged the bank's shareholders to convene an extraordinary general meeting to examine the latter’s record in managing its affairs. Cabarrús and the other directors of the bank were dismissed and shortly afterwards he was jailed for a cash smuggling offence allegedly committed back in the days of his youth.

With the accession of Charles IV to the throne and the upsets caused by the French Revolution, the political circumstances had changed. Opponents of the enlightenment-based policies in place saw this as an opportunity. Cabarrús lost support at court and his prosecution under civil jurisdiction went ahead. He spent five years in prison without ever coming to trial. In 1795 he was released and reinstated as a director by right of the Banco Nacional de San Carlos, when senior judges found procedural defects in the case against him and new treasury minister Diego de Gardoqui withdrew the charges. At the same time the war with the French National Convention came to an end and Prime Minister Godoy introduced a more pro-enlightenment domestic policy.

Godoy fell temoporarily out of favour, but when he recovered power (with the support of Spain's most reactionary party) he dismissed and jailed pro-enlightenment minsters, and Cabarrús was sent into internal exile in Burgos. From 1801 to 1807 he lived in Barcelona, where he undertook a number of industrial projects. On the outbreak of the popular uprising against the French in 1808 he met with Jovellanos in Zaragoza. Cabarrús declared his support for the 'legitimist' cause, but a few days later he was attacked by a group of insurrectionists because of his French birth and his known anti-traditionalist sympathies. This seems to have led him to change his position and join the cause of Joseph Bonaparte, who appointed him treasury minister in July that year. He still held that post when he died in Seville in 1810.

Extract from: P. Tedde de Lorca: Diccionario biográfico español, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2009-2013.

Paloma Gómez Pastor