Gómez-Moreno received his artistic education at the Schools of Fine Arts of Granada and Madrid, where he was trained in the models of eclectic academicism typical of the late Romantic period. He finally completed his studies in 1862, after a sixteen-year apprenticeship which afforded him a remarkable mastery of the trade, slowly forged in an orthodox academic milieu and a study of the great Spanish masters of yesteryear.

He taught drawing at the provincial high school, the Colegio de San Bartolomé y Santiago, in Granada.

His art work continued to combine academic purism with elements of seventeenth-century Spanish painting. In the 1860s and 1870s, he worked entirely in his hometown, making the most of the little spare time remaining from his teaching work and his growing interest in archaeology and history. During this period, he gradually incorporated a greater degree of naturalism into his early stylistic approach. This shift in style was most probably influenced by Mariano Fortuny, who lived in Granada between 1870 and 1872, and by other painters such as the Madrazo family and his many friends and followers from the artistic community. He added genre themes (generally worked from a sentimental, domestic perspective) and historical subjects, inspired by episodes in the history of Granada, particularly the wars between Christians and Moors, to his repertoire of themes.

In 1876, his Reading the Letter won him the Gold Medal at the Granada Exhibition and as a result he received a scholarship from Granada's Provincial Council to paint in Rome, where he was able to devote himself exclusively to his art. This new situation, combined with his gradual transition towards a certain 'realism' were to be decisive in forging his future style. Of crucial importance in this process were his relations with other Spanish artists living in the city (Alejandro Ferrant, Ricardo Bellver and, especially, Francisco Pradilla) and the influence of contemporary Italian painters Cesare Maccari and Cesare Fracassini. It was in Rome, to fulfil his commitment to the Granada Provincial Council, that he painted his two best known works: Departure of Boabdil's Family from the Alhambra and St John of God Saving the Patients at the Royal Hospital of Granada from Fire, the latter of which won him a Second Medal at the National Exhibition of 1881.

From 1881 on, he once more worked exclusively in Granada and the surrounding area, where his painting developed with few significant innovations. In keeping with the conservative taste of Spanish society of the time, he painted numerous religious paintings.

At the same time, Gómez-Moreno continued to perform some highly important work in the fields of archaeology and museology. In 1892, he published his Guide to Granada; he discovered the first remains of Medina Elvira, for which he was posthumously awarded the First Medina Elvira Award in 2014; and he worked on the paintings in the Alhambra, whose board of trustees he chaired from 1904 on. He was also involved in founding the Fine Arts and Archaeological Museums of Granada, as well as the Society for the Promotion of the Arts.

Javier Moya