Ignacio Zuloaga Eibar 1870-Madrid 1945

Ignacio Zuloaga, Livre de Raison, no. 357, listed
Vizzabona, Zuloaga Photographic Archive, Paris, no. 584
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, La Vida y el Arte de Ignacio Zuloaga, San Sebastián, 1950, p. 238, no. 475, catalogued
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, La Vida y el Arte de Ignacio Zuloaga, Madrid, 1972, fig. 88, illustrated

Painted in Madrid in 1920, the present work is the study for the large scale portrait of Doña María del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay, Duchess of Alba (1900-1934) that Zuloaga completed the following year (fig. 1). In 1912 Zuloaga had painted Don Jacobo Fitz James Stuart y Falcó, XVII Duke of Alba and X Duke of Berwick (1878-1953);  in 1930 and 1939 Zuloaga painted their daughter Cayetana, Duchess of Montoro (the present Duchess of Alba), see Lafuente Ferrari, nos. 440, 605 & 713.

Zuloaga first exhibited in New York at the invitation of Archer Huntington, when he showed forty works at the Hispanic Society in 1909. This was followed by a travelling exhibition of a further forty works during 1916-17. Zuloaga himself, however, did not visit the USA until the exhibition at the Reinhardt Galleries eight years later in 1925, where both the present study and the finished portrait of the Duchess of Alba were exhibited. Clearly the Alba pictures that he brought with him fully demonstrated his credentials as a society painter of the first rank, and in the wake of the exhibition portrait commissions quickly followed.

Fig. 1, Ignacio Zuloaga, The Duchess of Alba, Collection of the Duke and Duchess of Alba, Palacio de Liria, Madrid