Enrique Simonet

Enrique Simonet Lombardo (February 2, 1866 – April 20, 1927) was a Spanish painter.

Early life Simonet was born in Valencia in a Christian household of high social standing. His father was land-registrar Enrique Simonet Baca (1830–1899) and his mother was María de los Dolores Lombardo Riera; they had five other children. His first vocation of childhood was religious studies, but, with paternal support, he abandoned it to devote himself to painting. Despite being Valencian and studying at the Saint Charles Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Valencia, he joined a circle of artists in the city of Málaga. He also attended the workshop of Bernardo Ferrándiz Bádenes, forming part of the Malaga school of painting.

Career and travel

alt=In a dark morgue illuminated by a lone window, an anatomist in black holds a human heart; lying, dead and naked, in front of him on a table is a semi-clothed young woman. In 1885, Simonet, funded by his father, made his first trip to Italy.

Taking advantage of his stay Simonet traveled throughout Italy (including Venice where he painted Venetian Waterscape from 1887–1890), visited Paris several times and in 1890 he made a tour of the Mediterranean. In 1893 and 1894 Simonet traveled to North Africa, later acting as a war correspondent in Morocco for the magazine La Ilustración Española y Americana.

Asunción Castro Crespo was born in Córdoba in 1872 and raised in Málaga where she, at 18 years old, met Simonet. On February 26, 1897, Asunción and Enrique got married at the Church of Saint Jerome the Royal in Madrid. They had seven children together. In 1901, he became professor of Studies and Forms of Nature and Art, at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona; during this time, in 1904, he painted his masterpiece The Judgement of Paris. On August 30th of the next year, in his painting Eclipse, he depicted Northern Spain's eclipse. Again, Simonet visited and painted in Morocco. Between 1921 and 1922 he was director of the Private Paular for landscapers.

Style Like many other Spanish artists of the time, Simonet's work displays a relatively-continuous style with Spanish painting and was similarly inspired by the impressionist movement. Progressively, his works showed greater realism and attention to detail, straying away from the impressionist style. In his works made on his visits to North Africa, Simonet embraced an orientalist theme and included stereotypically Moroccan and Arabian elements in his paintings. He has paintings at Museo del Prado and Museo de Málaga. His painting The Beheading of Saint Paul is in a preferred place at the Malaga Cathedral. Since he was also devoted to decorative painting and landscape, among his surviving works which stand out are the four large canvases on Allegories of Law in the Palace of Justice in Barcelona and Allegories of the Eight Provinces in the Palace of Justice in Madrid.

Paintings