Anselmo Miguel Nieto (Valladolid 1881- Madrid 1964)
Anselmo Miguel Nieto (Valladolid 1881- Madrid ...

Anselmo Miguel Nieto (Valladolid 1881- Madrid 1964) Portrait of a lady
Black charcoal and touches of chalk on paper with stamp or watermark over the signature (double concentric oval with two capital letters). Signed in the lower left corner, and under the watermark of the watermark on the paper: ‘To Miguel Nieto / 1941’.

Size: 460 x 300 mm (paper support); 58 x 42 x 1.5 cm (frame).

Anselmo Miguel Nieto was a Spanish painter with national and international recognition until the Spanish Civil War, when his work was partly forgotten. He excelled in portraiture, especially female portraiture, influenced by the work of Zurbarán, Romero de Torres and Sorolla.

Of humble origins, he left Valladolid to study at the Madrid School of Fine Arts, where he studied with the professors Alejo Vera, himself a teacher of the award-winning Filipino painter Juan Luna Novicio, and José Moreno Carbonero, with the painters Zubiaurre, López Mezquita and Eugenio Hermoso as fellow pupils.

He obtained a grant to further his training, first in Rome and later in Paris, the latter in 1903, for two years. At that time he met his lifelong friend, the painter Aurelio Arteta, as well as the brilliant Pablo Picasso. There his work was influenced by that of the Catalan artist Hermen Anglada Camarasa. In 1906 he settled in Madrid, frequenting artistic gatherings at the Nuevo Café de Levante and meeting important cultural personalities such as the Barojas, Valle-Inclán (whom he portrayed between 1934 and 1935) and Francisco de Cossío, among others.

Various national and foreign exhibitions recognise his artistic career (1910, Gold Medal at the Buenos Aires International Exhibition; 1911, Gold Medal at the Barcelona International Art Exhibition; 1913, Munich).

In 1922 he travelled with Julio Romero de Torres to Argentina and Chile, returning to Spain in 1946. From that time onwards his fame diminished, and despite this he was made an Academician of San Fernando in 1952, the year in which he died in Madrid.

His style evolved from expressionist realism towards a richly luminous, colourful modernism, with loose execution and vigorous realistic detail. He interpreted his portraits with a certain allegorical and sensual sense (along the lines of masters such as Romero de Torres and Zuloaga). His work was shown in numerous exhibitions (Missouri, Munich, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, etc.), and others are kept in various public and private collections, such as the Museo Nacional del Teatro, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, the Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísima Concepción in Valladolid and the Salón Real del Casino in Madrid.

The present painting shows a particular combination of the two figures portrayed and the mountainous landscape in the background.

mountainous landscape in the background. The seated lady in black and the young woman in a white dress show the strength of draughtsmanship usual in the master's production, and are comparable to several portraits of bourgeois ladies in private collections in Madrid and Valladolid. The landscape background (in which only the presence of a bridge hints at human intervention) is notable for its light and chromatic combination, which recalls works by the artist such as the portrait of Concha Lagos (1954) and the portrait of the dancer Anita Delgado, later a Maharani from Kapurtala (1905).