Aureliano de Beruete

Aureliano de Beruete (Madrid, 27 of September of 1845 – Ibid. 5 of January of 1912), was an intellectual, landscape painter and political Spanish. Doctor of Law from the University of Madrid in 1867, he became a deputy in the legislatures of 1871 and 1872. As an artist, he trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid where he was a student of Carlos de Haes; his comfortable economic situation would allow him to dedicate himself fully to painting. Among its first landscapes is the recreation ofOrbajosa, an imaginary villa created by Galdós as the setting for his novel Doña Perfecta; This painting was presented to the writer and is kept in the Pérez Galdós House-Museum in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Friend of well-known painters of the time such as his countryman Martin Rico, the Catalan aristocrat Ramón Casas or the Valencian Joaquín Sorolla, who painted two of his best portraits and who, after the death of Beruete, organized the first anthological exhibition in his palace in Madrid of the artist to

In the last years of his life he wrote some short treatises on painting and painters, including one of the first monographs on Velázquez, whose first edition was made in Paris in 1898.

Biography
Born Aureliano de Beruete y Moret (but known as Aureliano de Beruete to differentiate him from his son) in a family of the socio-economic-political elite. He studied law between 1864 and 1867, while he began painting easel with the Rioja painter Carlos Múgica, and visited the Museo del Prado as a copyist. He began his political career with the decade of 1870 as deputy-elect in Cortes. The coup of Pavia in 1873 separated him from politics, to devote himself from then until his death to paint landscapes, collect works and write essays. In 1874, he met Carlos de Haes as a student in his chair of landscape at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, initiating in addition a friendship reinforced by the numerous plenairistas trips that share by the Mountain range of the Guadarrama and very diverse zones of the peninsular geography, especially the Cantabrian Cornice. In all this influences the krausistas ideology of the circle of intellectuals and university professors headed by Nicolás Salmerón and Francisco Giner de los Ríos who, from the International School and then the Free Institution of Education, took to the world of the arts what was later known as the ninetieth-century spirit based on Castilian aesthetics and its history.

In 1877 he married his cousin María Teresa Moret y Remisa and became fully involved in the institutionalist project of Giner. The following year he traveled to Paris, where Aureliano meets, through Rogelio de Egusquiza, a common friend, another of his essential referents, the painter Martin Rico, who introduces him to the pre – Impressionist group of Barbizón. On his return, he competed for the first time in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts, obtaining that year a third class medal. In the years immediately following he carried out long campaigns «en plein-air» for Galicia and the Basque Country. In 1882 he participated in the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Vienna, and the following year began his series of illustrations for the national episodes of Galdós. In 1889 he is in Paris as part of the jury of the Universal Exhibition and the following year he makes several trips to Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Critics estimate that after 1891 Beruete’s painting entered its second artistic stage, influenced by Velazquez’s subject matter and techniques, and definitively abandoning the academicism in the composition of the landscape of his master Haes. An indefatigable traveler, inside and outside of Spain, his love of music also led him to his annual appointment with the Bayreuth Festival. Paradoxically, as his art grows and his painting is personalized, his estimation diminishes in the exhibitions he attends, a demerit that does not prevent him from delivering the opening speech of the new Sala dedicated to Velázquez at the Museo del Prado in 1899.

Carmen Pena, specialist in landscape and landscaping, points out a final turn from 1903 in the painting of Beruete, position that will definitely lead to Impressionist aesthetics, a circumstance that has been related to his friendship with Darío de Regoyos. In that first decade of the 20th century, Aureliano continued traveling and painting in scenes of the Swiss Alps, the Eastern Pyrenees and the Castilian belt bordering Madrid (Toledo, Segovia, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Ávila). He exhibits in Buenos Aires (1904), participates in the International Exhibition of Barcelona in 1907, and the following year is named member of the Hispanic Society of New York.

Regular visitor of the spas in Vichy in the last years of his life, 8 Aureliano de Beruete died suddenly at his home in Madrid, on January 5, 1912.

Style
After a first glare as a student and fellow traveler of Carlos de Haes, taking notes of the natural that were later worked in the workshop, Beruete traveled to Paris, where Martin Rico began him in the circle of painters ” plenairistas ” of the so-called school of Barbizon, perfecting and modifying both his techniques and his love of outdoor painting. The precise and academically heavier brushstroke evolved into more fluid forms, closer to the impressionist style. The Recoletos frames gave way to open and luminous compositions. Among the most frequent and original perspectives we can highlight the painted ones in the surroundings of the city of Madrid, the one of Toledo, or in the Guadarrama mountains.

His vision has been linked with poetic landscape of the generation of 98, the regeneracionismo and essentially the philosophy of the Free Institution of Education, four of which he was steadfast protector and teacher.

Selection of works
View of the low fertile plain from the Cambrón: the river and its banks with the arms factory in the background, 1985
Train at night, 1891
Landscape of Torrelodones, 1891
View of the Guadarrama from El Plantío 1901
Lavaderos del Manzanares 1904
El Tajo (Toledo), oil on canvas, 57 x 85 cm, signed, 1905
Outskirts of Madrid (Bellas Vistas neighborhood), oil on canvas, 57 x 81 cm, signed, 1906
Orillas del Manzanares (1907 Madrid), oil on canvas, 35 x 43 cm, signed, 1907
The Manzanares, oil on canvas, 58 x 81 cm, signed, 1908
Madrid from the Manzanares, oil on canvas, 57 x 81 cm, signed, 1908
Prairie of San Isidro (The house of the deaf), oil on canvas, 62 x 103 cm, signed, 1909
Paisaje de otoño (Madrid), óleo sobre lienzo, 66 x 95 cm, firmado, 1910
Venta del Macho (Toledo), óleo sobre lienzo, 39 x 50 cm, firmado, 1911
La tapia del Pardo, óleo sobre lienzo, 47 x 53 cm, firmado, 1911
Espinos en flor (Plantío de Infantes, Madrid), óleo sobre lienzo, 66 x 100 cm, firmado, 1911
Paisaje con río (Quimperle, Bretaña) 1911
El Guadarrama, óleo sobre lienzo, 56 x 102 cm, firmado, 1911

Source from Wikipedia