JOSÉ JIMÉNEZ ARANDA – Part 2

Article by Carol GRACE de SOFIA, Drawing Academy student

JOSÉ JIMÉNEZ ARANDA – 1837-1903

In Rome, Jiménez Aranda worked for months, developing the details of his art and further personalizing each piece.

He planned his pictures in successive stages, determining in advance what he was going to paint, and in exactly what way.

The figures in his “cloak” (casacones) paintings were carefully studied. He constantly made sketches and preparatory drawings for each canvas.

He conducted rigorous research about the objects and clothes he included.
The attitudes and manners of his characters are natural and well-balanced, the figures relaxed and lacking any artificiality.

When Fortuny, a well-respected and powerful artist whose opinion was treated as law by Art collectors and merchants, met Aranda, he was taken by the painting “Dios guarde al Rey” (God save the King) and bought it immediately. He said, “This man draws in such a way he could teach us all.” He recognized at once the artist’s incredible talent. “This painting has a solid structure and a far better understanding of the time in which the scene is placed in, than any of mine.”

In the painting “Sermón en el patio de los naranjos en la Catedral de Sevilla”, his work began to approach perfection.

Precise details can be made out in the background: a gothic cathedral set against a rustic home behind Orange trees;

the figures all grouped harmoniously and well balanced. The refinement and exactness of the figures is such that the alternating planes in which they are placed produce a clear sensation of three-dimensionality, particularly evident in figures like the man, who, being in a secondary plane between two front-line figures, stands out from the background thanks to his striking purple suit.

The most productive years of Aranda’s life were between 1881-1890, while he worked in Paris, France.

Aranda’s success as a painter is owed to three essential facts: hard work, inherent talent, and a strong sense of composition. Like a composer creating new arrangements for his music, Jiménez Aranda repeats attitudes and postures in his figures: compare the deaf man

and the men at a presentation.

Other times, it is not attitudes but related subjects: old men and birds.

He had achieved total maturity, knowing that he could paint whatever he intended exactly as he desired.