Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer, Ladies and Gentlemen Visiting a Patio of the Alcázar of Seville, 1857

Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer

(1817–1879)

Ladies and Gentlemen Visiting a Patio of the Alcázar of Seville

1857

Oil on canvas

20 1/8 x 24 in. (51.1 x 61 cm)

Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.65.15

Listen to Adam Jasienski, Assistant Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University discuss this work (1:17 minutes)

Audio Transcript

Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer (Spanish, 1817–1879)

Ladies and Gentlemen Visiting a Patio of the Alcázar of Seville, 1857

by Adam Jasienski, assistant professor of art history at Southern Methodist University

What I find most interesting in this painting is the tension that it registers between history and modernity. Although it takes place in an ancient monument, the Alcázar of Seville, the scene depicts fashionably dressed, nineteenth-century individuals and couples engaged in a very modern activity–the leisurely sightseeing of a monument from the distant past. It is worth remembering that the Alcázar itself was, in many ways, a profoundly modern structure in that it was being reworked, restored, but also re-antiqued in this period. The artist responsible for this painting would have understood very well the work that had gone into creating this illusion of a perfectly preserved historical building. Domínguez Bécquerwas for a time the director of the renovation of the Alcázar. Nineteenth-century restorers, architects, and historians were becoming increasingly interested in historical preservation and in trying to recreate the original state of a building. But in a structure as historically layered and complex and rich as that of the Alcázar, this goal was in many ways impossible.