José Gallegos Cádiz 1859-Rome 1917

Edward Francis Searles, Methuen, Massachusetts, USA;
Benjamin Allen Rowland, Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA (inherited from the above in 1920);
Thence by descent to the present owner (inherited from the above in 1991)

The exquisitely intricate detail in this Gallegos’s most celebrated subject makes it easy to see why demand vastly outstripped supply for Gallegos’s work during the artist’s lifetime. Delightfully playful and tongue-in-cheek in his depiction of the choirmaster and choristers, Gallegos thrills in the contrast between the elaborate intricacies of the organ, rich tapestry and costumes against the dark interior of Seville cathedral, flaunting his exceptional virtuosity.

Gallegos’s ability to convey a sense of character and movement with such vitality led one famous Italian art critic, Mario Passage, to write of these Christian subjects that they are ‘so wonderfully powerful and alive that you can almost hear the choir chanting and smell the incense burning’.

Following travels around Italy and a year in Venice in 1886, (see the following lot), he settled in Rome where he fell in love and married a Milanese girl Giuseppina Trelanzi in 1887 with whom he had four children. Galvanised by this new domestic contentment and his love of Rome, Gallegos embarked upon some of the most accomplished and exemplary works of his career, the present work executed in 1889 being no exception.

Retaining his early training in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, the architectural constituents in Gallegos’s compositions are as exquisitely detailed as every other element. The gargoyles and putti languishing among the carvings of the organ pay little heed to the chorus being chanted below them. The illuminated youthful faces of the young sopranos contrast sharply with the worn gaunt faces and frames of the elderly bass and baritone singers at the other end of the balcony.

The artist’s success during his lifetime was such that he had dealers and private buyers throughout the world in ready demand of receiving a painting. He had a regular contract with a Dutch dealer in Berlin, van Baerle, to produce for him one painting a month, however Gallegos’s painstaking attention to detail prevented him from always honouring this agreement. In London, he sold his work directly to his dealer and friend Arthur Tooth, while in the USA the publisher William Randolph Hearst and the earliest known owner of the present work, Edward Francis Searles (an interior and architectural designer) were among the private collectors who acquired works by Gallegos.

A leading light of the Spanish School in Rome, along with José Villegas (lot 174) and Mariano Fortuny, Gallegos took the latter’s eye for detail to new heights, painting pictures that thrilled through their sharpness and finesse.