Valeriano Dominguez Becquer
(b Seville, 1833; d Madrid,
Sept 1870).
Spanish painter. He was the son of the painter José Domínguez
Bécquer (1810–41). Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by
his father’s first cousin, the painter Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer
(1819–79), who undertook his artistic training. Valeriano’s first
works were small costumbrista paintings of local customs and manners
that were intended for a quick, cheap sale. These scenes of everyday
life are often serious and pessimistic, in contrast to the more
superficial treatment given to such subjects by other Sevillian
artists. Bécquer’s portraits of his close friend, the English consul
Francis Williams and his wife Elvira (both Seville, priv. col.; see
1974 exh. cat., nos 9 and 10), also date from this period in
Seville. After the breakup of his marriage in 1862, he moved to
Madrid to join his brother, the celebrated Romantic poet Gustavo
Adolfo Bécquer (1836–70). There, in 1864, Valeriano and his brother
obtained an annual grant from the Minister of the Interior, González
Bravo, which was to be used to record popular Spanish types and
scenes. Between 1864 and 1868 the brothers travelled through Aragón
and Castilla, Gustavo Adolfo devoting himself to writing and
Valeriano painting costumbrista scenes, landscapes and monuments. In
1868, after González Bravo was dismissed, Valeriano lost his
allowance and lived precariously until shortly before his death,
when in 1870 he was appointed cartoonist for the recently founded
review, La ilustración de Madrid. Bécquer’s works express the
essence of Spanish Romanticism, and such paintings of bourgeois life
as Family Interior (1856; Cádiz, Mus. Pint.) and Study of a Painter
(1859; Madrid, Casón Buen Retiro) depict the serene and melancholy
atmosphere of this movement. The portrait of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
(c. 1862; Seville, Mus. B.A.), painted during his Madrid period, is
one of the most attractive pictures of European Romanticism.
