Vicente Palmaroli y González

Early in his career, Palmaroli followed in the tradition of most other successful painters of his generation; he took the mandatory trip to Rome.  However, it was in Paris where he found his greatest commercial success, so much so that he received commissions faster than he could complete his paintings (C. González and M. Marti, Spanish Painters in Paris,  London, 1989, p. 199).  In 1873, Palmaroli took a studio on the elegant Rue Laroche; this was also the setting for evening get-togethers with fellow Spanish artists, together with such well known personalities as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alfred Stevens.  Most likely, our painting dates to the late 1870s, as it is very close in subject and style to Alfred Stevens’s paintings of fashionable ladies from this period.  Like Stevens, Palmaroli shows a stunning woman – not a beauty in the traditional sense of the word – but someone who is characterized by her style.  She is dressed in the latest fashion – a beautiful ruffled skirt trimmed in lace with an embroidered bodice, and to shield herself from the wind and sand, is wrapped in a vibrantly colored velvet chenille shawl. 

Palmaroli’s works were avidly collected by America’s robber barons in the decades following the Civil War.