IGNACIO PINAZO CAMARLENCH

Valencia,(Spain) 1849 – Godella (Spain) 1916  

The straitened circumstances of his family obliged him to take up various occupations, which from 1864 onwards he combined with studying at the Academia de San Carlos. It was not until 1870 that he began to devote himself wholly to painting, showing a special inclination towards portraits, influenced by the ways in which Francisco Domingo interpreted the Spanish baroque tradition in the work he produced during that period. He found the money to travel to Italy in 1871, accompanied by José Miralles and the sculptor Suñol, after being rejected for a grant which was subsequently awarded to him in 1876. During this second period in Italy, which continued until 1881, he defined his style: he relegated historical painting exclusively to commitments connected with the grant that he had been awarded, and he incorporated the chromaticism and landscape themes of Fortuny and Rosales, and the treatment of matter and the painting supports with which the macchiaoli obtained their visual effects. On returning to Valencia he was made president of the Fine Arts section of the Ateneo in that city.

Between 1884 and 1886 he taught colouring and composition at the Escuela de San Carlos. He completed various commissions to decorate houses in the style of Tiepolo, as a complement to his painting activity, which acquired an increasingly dynamic quality. He was made an Academician of San Carlos in 1896. The following year a portrait won him a medal at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes, which gave him the entrée to Madrid. He was appointed as an assistant drawing teacher at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in Madrid, and he executed important portraits, such as those of Alfonso XIII or Romero Robledo. Before returning definitively to Godella, where he had owned a house since 1885, he became a member of the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid (1903).