Pinazo Camarlench, Ignacio

Valencia

Born in a humble home, he worked in various jobs to support the family economy. He had only been in his eighth grade at school when his mother died of cholera in one of the pandemics that devastated Spain in the 19th century. Among the various jobs he had were silversmith, tile decorator and fan painter. When his father died he went to live with his grandfather and he began studying in 1864 at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos de su Valencia, while he earned his living as a hatter. In 1871, for the first time, he presented works at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. He was in Rome twice, the first thanks to the sale of a painting (1873), the second with a scholarship (from 1876 to 1881) painting works of history, although far from the conventions of the genre, but still of an academic nature. Starting in 1874 he began a more intimate and impressionistic line of painting. When he returned to his hometown, he replaced historical themes with family themes, nudes and scenes of daily life, in line with the work of other painters such as Joaquín Sorolla and Francisco Domingo Marqués. Due to a new cholera epidemic in Valencia, Pinazo temporarily left in 1884 to Godella, specifically to "Villa María", the country house of the banker and patron José Jaumandreu. From 1884 to 1886 he taught at the Valencia School. In the national art exhibitions Pinazo achieved, in 1881, and in 1885, a second class medal, and in 1897,1899, a first class medal. In 1896 he joined the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia as an academic. Thus becoming one of the most valued portrait painters, after receiving the first medal at the national exhibition of 1897, he also made, in successive years, official portraits such as those of the minister Juan Francisco Camacho, the president of the Congress of Deputies, Francisco Romero Robledo, and Alfonso XIII. In 1900 he participated in the decoration of the staircase of the mansion of Don José Ayora, in the company of Antonio Fillol, Peris Brell, Ricardo Verde and Luis Beüt. In 1903 he was named academician of San Fernando, and in 1912 the city of Valencia dedicated a street to him. He had two children with Teresa Martínez Montfort, later also painters, Ignacio and José.

Godella