Paseo del Prado

Eduardo Vicente was the painter par excellence of Madrid life. His canvases and watercolours portray the streets and people of a city that has now all but disappeared. This type of picturesque genre scene, which Vicente painted throughout his life in an overt rejection of avant-garde principles, meant that his work was to some extent forgotten and that he has only been rediscovered relatively recently. Vicente was one of a group of painters in Madrid in the 1920s who enjoyed the support and approbation of Juan Ramón Jiménez, a fact that allowed Vicente to establish his position as a painter of popular figure types, landscapes and traditional customs. His support for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War meant that he was obliged to live in a semi-clandestine manner in the post-war years, working as a house painter. The support of Eugenio d’Ors, who introduced him to the gallery owner Aurelio Biosca, enabled Vicente to return to artistic painting. Uninterested in avant-garde trends, of which his brother, the painter Esteban Vicente, was a leading champion, he continued to produce melancholy urban views peopled by figures from the humbler social classes. With its rather oppressive atmosphere and slender figures, this view of the Paseo del Prado by the Botanical Gardens is a clear example of Vicente’s sentimental genre painting.