Museo Carmen Thyssen

José Domínguez Bécquer was born in Seville on 22 January 1805 and was the father of the painter Valeriano Bécquer (1833–1870) and the great Romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870). He trained as an artist at the Seville School of Fine Arts, where he was one of the most brilliant pupils. From an early age he devoted himself chiefly to small genre paintings to be sold locally and also for the English market, to which many of his works were exported from Cadiz. José Domínguez Bécquer is rightly held to be one of the initiators of Andalusian genre painting with an emphasis on folk customs within the Spanish Romantic tradition. He also painted urban scenes of Seville, although with less success, as well as a few portraits and religious and history paintings.

Domínguez Bécquer’s career was cut short by his premature death in Seville on 26 January 1841 at the early age of thirty-six.

José Luis Díez