Paris Nocturne. The Singer

Carlos Baca-Flor was perhaps the last representative of academic art of the twentieth century. Trained initially at the Academy of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile, the painter continued his studies in Europe, travelling there in 1890 on a scholarship from the Peruvian government. After living for a few years in Rome, he moved to Paris and entered the Académie Julian, where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens. While he followed a rigorous academic discipline, at the same time Baca-Flor produced works which, by experimenting with the materiality of painting, reveal a wholly modern sensibility. The Singer formed part of a series of small oil paintings depicting Paris nightlife, produced between 1895 and 1900. This series reflects Baca-Flor’s adherence to the new urban themes that had been developed by the Impressionists, which can also be seen in the Paris scenes of his friend, the Spaniard Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa. The painter left behind the superficial correctness and dark palette of the portraits and landscapes of his first period, opening himself up to greater compositional vitality and a freer brushstroke. (NM)