Spanish painter. Primarily a portraitist, he was influenced by
Mengs, whose style he continued into the 19th century.
In 1785 he entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia at the age of 13. Within four years the prodigious artist had won a number of prizes for his work, including his painting of Tobias Restoring his Father s Sight (today in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia) and was awarded a scholarship to the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. During his few formative years in Madrid he was strongly influenced by the work of the leading academicians, notably Mariano Salvador Maella and Gregorio Forro, whose style continued the tradition established earlier in the century by Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1790 Lpez returned to Valencia and became vice-director of painting at the Academia. The majority of the artist s work from his early phase however is religious in subject matter.
Following the death of his wife in 1814 however, Lpez was summoned to Madrid by Ferdinand VII, to whom he was appointed Pintor de Cmara, and within a short time he was appointed first court painter, replacing Maella. (Ferdinand VII preferred him to
Goya.) In 1817 he became director of the Academia of San Femando, and in 1823 director of the Prado.
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