19th-20th Century Spanish

Manuel Picolo y López was born in 1851 in a well-off family in Murcia. At the age of eleven he already excelled in drawing. We have no information about his training, although we know that when he was awarded a scholarship from the Diputación de Murcia in 1872, the decision was questioned in artistic circles, arguing that Picolo lacked the necessary training. This circumstance was probably behind his decision to move to Madrid in 1873, to further his education before eventually taking up the grant.

In the Spanish capital he frequented the city’s main museums and exhibition halls, and these visits were to play an instrumental role in his art training. He enrolled at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, although he did not attend the lessons diligently, instead preferring to visit the Prado to learn directly from the great masters there, particularly Goya.

In 1876 he could eventually take up his scholarship in Paris, and in 1877 he returned to Madrid to continue his studies there. Around this time, he became involved in graphic illustration, producing drawings of exceptional quality. For various years he worked tirelessly between Madrid and Murcia, and his work began to attract attention in cultural circles in his hometown, where he began to receive commissions. One of the most remarkable of those commissions was the painting of murals to decorate the ceilings of the city’s Casino—of which only those in the Ballroom have been preserved—where one can see signs of his great talent. Other important commissions included a portrait of King Alfonso XII for the assembly hall of the Instituto Provincial, and another portrait of Queen María Cristina, currently kept at Diputación de Murcia, both of which allow us to appreciate a notable evolution in his style.

In 1880 he settled definitively in Madrid. That year he began to collaborate as an illustrator with the weekly magazine La Ilustración Española y Americana, an activity he would intensify from that moment onwards. The following year he submitted a painting for the first time to the : Canciones militares (Military Songs). Although he did not receive any award, the work was praised by the critics and was purchased by the Portuguese ambassador.

In 1885 he travelled again to Paris. By then he was a well-known specialist in narrative painting, highly influenced by Goya and by genre painting. We do not know how long he stayed in the French capital, but it is highly likely that he visited the studios of Paris-based Spanish artists, like Raimundo de Madrazo (1841-1920), whose influence is visible in Picolo’s work.

Throughout that period Picolo began to practice a brand of painting which, beyond the truthful depiction of facts, prioritized the psychological mood and the representation of daily life. His military scenes, and also the historical episodes, became allegories of everyday problems or events. All his works evince a will to build a carefully devised narrative, something he achieved by conveying a sense of truthfulness in his meticulous realism. In this regard, and particularly in compositional terms, Picolo appears highly influenced by Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874) and his scenes of battles in Morocco.

In 1887 Picolo submitted the painting Batalla de Villalar (Battle of Villalar) to the , in which he was awarded an Honorary Certificate. From then on, his presence in Madrid’s art circles became more habitual, although he always maintained his connections with his native Murcia. In 1892 he took part for the last time in the annual exhibition, with the painting Las fiestas de Baco (The Festival of Bacchus), awarded with a third class medal that further enhanced his prestige.

There is no known documentation of his personal whereabouts in the last decade of his life, despite abundant evidence of his work as an illustrator in the most important publications of the time. This activity won him many prizes and increased his fame, undoubtedly helping him to lead a comfortable life until his demise in 1913.