Goya, Velázquez, Sorolla and El Greco in Picadilly Street

Sometimes you have to surrender to the topic.

London's

(RAA, in its acronym in English) presents from January 21 the exhibition

(Spain and the Hispanic World)

a compilation of 150 of the works that the

of New York.

The romantic vision of a Spain that American millionaire Archer M. Huntington fell in love with, to whose artistic heritage he dedicated an imposing neoclassical building in Upper Manhattan.

The stereotype of a conquering and conquered country, Arab and mestizo, luminous like Sorolla's beaches and ascetic like El Greco's rising martyrs.

A culture that anticipated modernity in the lines of Velázquez and, above all, Goya, and that perpetuated folklore with

de Zuloaga or

de Gutiérrez Solana.

It is a fragmented exposition of an invariable Spain in which even the modernism of Anglada Camarasa is presented with her

;

that of Rusiñol with the

of the Sagunto cemetery;

and that of Fortuny with his

in an episode of the Spanish-Moroccan war.

The collection of the Hispanic Society, which was already exhibited at the Prado Museum in 2017, is the largest collection of Spanish and Hispanic art outside of Spain.

It is difficult for any curator to try to propose a new perspective or different point of view of a set of paintings and decorative arts that respond to the desire for an idyllic, primitive and rural society on the part of those who set out to acquire them.

Huntington probably deplored the industrialization that altered the American landscape in the 19th century, but he sought refuge not in the slaveholding South or the pioneer West, but in the rural Spain that he discovered in a small Liverpool bookstore, before undertake with his family the first trip to the European continent.

“It is the vision of one man in particular, Archer Huntington, who collected and put together all these works because he fell in love with Spain as a young man, and decided that the Metropolitan Museum of New York did not correctly represent Spanish art, so he decided to open its own museum back in 1904", explains Per Rumberg, one of the two curators who have set up what they intend to be one of the most important exhibitions of the RAA in 2023. "We have slightly changed the approach of what was the exhibition in the Prado.

Approximately it remains in its two third parts.

We have removed some of the historical documents that were exhibited in Madrid to focus more on the works of art.

We have not included the series of 19th century portraits that were most interesting for the Spanish public.

We have dedicated a gallery expressly to Goya, with an extra portrait [of his friend Pedro Mocarte].

And we have placed emphasis, with three galleries, on the artistic expressions of the Hispanic world of Latin America in the colonial era”, sums up Rumberg.

'Young people from Burriana, falleras'.

(1910-11), by Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa.The Hispanic Society of America

Surrounded by a large Hispanic community in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, the Hispanic Society has devoted considerable effort in recent years to incorporating material from colonial America into its collection.

The selection of the canvas

, by José Agustín Arrieta, the portrait of a young man of African origin in the Mexican town of Veracruz;

or

, the painting by Juan Rodríguez Juárez that reflects the obsession with race, mixtures and purity of blood, shows that the curators have wanted to transmit a certain intention to the American part of the exhibition , in line with the review of the colonial past that the British are promoting through debate in their own country.

“Of course the colonial period is controversial, and we try to approach it from that perspective in our texts and interpretations.

But it also shows a fusion of indigenous and Spanish traditions, as well as the multiple layers that ultimately make up the artistic history of Spain,” admits Rumberg.

The treasures that pardon the topic

It is in the interest of the visitor to the RAA exhibition, especially the Spanish visitor, to forget the general approach that is proposed to him and focus on the opportunity to have individual masterpieces before his eyes.

Goya's full-length portrait of the Duchess of Alba is worth the trip to Picadilly Street on its own.

The man from Fuendetodos kept for himself, in his own studio, many years after the death of María Teresa de Silva, the image of the Spanish aristocrat in her black maja costume, that declaration of closeness to the people repeated decades later by the third of the Alba who held the title of duchess.

'Portrait of a Girl' (1638-1642), by Diego de Silva y Velázquez.The Hispanic Society of America

The Penitent Saint Jerónimo

, by El Greco, or the

by Zurbarán, serve to represent that Spain imbued with religiosity and at the same time so grandiose and solemn that many Anglo-Saxons still dream of.

And the children who crawl along the luminous shores of the Mediterranean, or the girls who dress after bathing in the sea in Sorolla's canvases are still the Levante for which millions of Englishmen still yearn for —and flood— each summer.

The final surprise of the exhibition is a ton of topics spread over several meters.

For the first time, you can see the sketch made by the Valencian painter with watercolor on brown paper, before starting to work on the great work that Huntington commissioned:

(Vision of Spain), the fourteen large panels with several of the regions of Spain.

Fishermen, farmers, bandits, falleras and gypsies, all dressed in local folk costumes, under the majesty of cathedrals or the daily life of granaries and adobe huts.

As in many exhibitions, the route of this one also leads to the museum shop, where a table awaits the visitor with legumes from León El Maragato, cans of tuna in olive oil and sardines, sacks of bomba rice —essential in any paella. —, jars of saffron, dry and sweet peppers from Doña Jimena.

All between bowls and clay jugs.

A portion and a half of Spanishness in Piccadilly street.

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