Murillo: at Dulwich Picture Gallery - Softcover

Xavier Bray

9781781300084: Murillo: at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781300089 ISBN 13: 9781781300084

Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 2013

The paintings of Bartolom� Esteban Murillo (1618-1682),which depict women and children of the artist's world, constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. Although best known for his religious works,these lively,realist portraits of flower girls,urchins and beggars on the streets of Seville reveal Murillo's broad scope and adaptability to the requirements of his patron. Taking the Dulwich Picture Gallery s excellent collection of masterpieces as a starting point,this book demonstrates Murillo's far-reaching popularity and the influence he had on artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, whose fancy pictures show a clear affinity with Murillo's paintings of children. The artworks are sumptuously illustrated, while reproductions of other Murillo paintings put the master's enduring art into a historical and social context. There is important new scholarship on attribution and technique, with x-ray images revealing fresh and unexpected insights into the genesis and evolution of Murillo's compositions. One piece has never before been shown in print and several of the other key works have been newly conserved -bringing them back to life in their full splendour. The book also shows how Dulwich played a seminal role in collecting works by Murillo. It was Dulwich s collection of Murillos,gathered in Britain s first purpose-built gallery,which promoted the artist s reputation and enabled artists like Thomas Gainsborough to soak up his influence.

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About the Author:

Dr Xavier Bray has been Chief Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery since January 2011. He completed his doctoral dissertation, Royal Religious Commissions as Political Propaganda in Spain under Charles III at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1999. Between 1998 and 2000, he was Assistant Curator at the National Gallery in London, where he co-curated exhibitions such as Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I (1998-99), A Brush with Nature. The Gere Collection of Landscape Oil Sketches (1999) and The Image of Christ: Seeing Salvation (2000). He was also the curator of a Room 1 exhibition at the British Museum on Goya's Family of the Infante Don Luis (2001-2002). Between 2000 and 2002 he was Chief Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao where he organised exhibitions such as An Intimate Vision -Women Impressionists (2001-2002) and a focused exhibition on Vicente Lopez: Court Painter to Fernando VII (2002). On his return to the National Gallery in 2002 as Assistant Curator of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European paintings, he was the co-curator of El Greco (2004), Caravaggio (2005), Velazquez (2006). He recently curated his first solo show The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700 (2009) and is now working on an exhibition of Goya's Portraits for the National Gallery due to open in 2015.

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