Lot 337: - Julio Romero de Torres Córdoba 1874-1930 , Amparo oil on canvas

signed JULIO ROMERO DE TORRES lower centre oil on canvas

96.2 by 95.5cm., 38 by 37½in.

Seville, Iberoamerican Exhibition, Pabellón de Córdoba, 1930

Pedro Massa, Romero de Torres, Buenos Aires, 1942, no. 82

Arturo Uriarte y Piñero (purchased from the artist in 1930)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (bequeathed by the above in 1941)
Returned to the descendants of the Uriarte y Piñero family, 1991
Acquired from the above by the present owner

We are grateful to Mercedes Valverde for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Painted at the end of the 1920s Amparo is one of Romero de Torres' great late portraits of Andalusian beauties. Others of similar rank that he executed at this time include La Chiquita piconera, Rivalidad and Fuensanta. These three works were among the twenty-seven paintings selected by the artist for the retrospective celebrating his life's work mounted in the Córdoba Pavilion at the Ibéroamericana fair in Seville in 1930.

After the exhibition Arturo Uriarte y Piñero acquired the present work together with Rivalidad and two other paintings for his residence in Buenos Aires. The brothers Leopoldo and Arturo Uriarte y Piñero were both physicians in Argentina, sons of a merchant in Vizcaya. Leopoldo was also a highly-respected scientist who carried out research on the bubonic plague in Argentina and worked for the Bacteriological Institute, now named the Instituto Malbrán in memory of his colleague and friend Dr. Malbrán. Leopoldo represented Argentina in several medical congresses and donated the Pasteur Pavilion to the Instituto Malbrán.

When Leopoldo died in 1942, Arturo donated his painting collection to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Argentina on the condition that the pictures should never leave the country nor be removed from the museum's walls. Those conditions were breached and the collection returned to the descendants of Arturo Uriarte y Piñero from whom the present owner acquired Amparo.

Although the identity of the sitter is unknown, Romero de Torres also painted an oil study of the model's face in 1929, which was used by the magazine Blanco y Negro for their almanac of that year.

Born into a rich artistic heritage, Romero de Torres followed in the footsteps of his father, the painter Rafael Romero Barros, who was also the founder, director and curator of Córdoba's Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes. Beginning his artistic studies at the age of ten, Romero de Torres attended the Escuela de Bellas Artes until 1906, when he moved to Madrid to work and study. Although Romero de Torres spent most of his life in Madrid and his birthplace of Córdoba, his extensive travels in Europe and Argentina opened his eyes to alternative interpretations of Symbolism, Realism and Impressionism.