Ulpiano Checa y Sanz 1860-1916

Son of a wealthy owner of stone quarries in the Madrid region, Ulpiano Checa y Sanz showed a talent for drawing and painting from an early age. He began his artistic training in 1873 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where he studied under Manuel Domínguez, Federico de Madrazo, Alejandro Ferrant, and Pablo y Gonzalvo Peres. In 1884, he obtained a residency at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, from where he sent a masterful work, The Invasion of the Barbarians. This large-scale painting truly launched his career, earning him a first-class medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1887, followed by a gold medal at the 1888 Universal Exposition in Barcelona, before being acquired by the Prado Museum.

Riding the wave of this prestigious success, he established a solid reputation as a history painter, while also pursuing more commercial subjects such as horses and genre scenes set in Orientalist or classical-inspired settings. Upon his return from Italy, Checa chose to set up his studio in Paris, first on Rue de Douai and later on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, producing drawings for the magazine L’Illustration, for which he served as a correspondent. Exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1888, he won a third-class medal in 1890 and participated nearly every year until 1914. In 1895, the Galerie Georges Petit organized his first solo exhibition, which definitively established his international reputation, not only in Europe but also in Latin America and the Maghreb. Knighted in the Order of Carlos III by the Spanish government in 1891, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1894 and won a gold medal at the 1900 Universal Exposition.

Painted on what resembles the lid of a cigar box, our small oil belongs to the most intimate part of Ulpiano Checa’s work. It harmoniously gathers a series of five studies of young Parisian women captured en plein air, likely without their knowledge, from the front, profile, or back, during their strolls along the city’s streets. Quickly rendered on a fine white ground and highlighted with broad gray, pink, and blue strokes, these silhouettes fit into the creative process of larger paintings depicting emblematic city locations, such as Place de la République, noted at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1889 (cat. no. 558), or Place de l’Opéra (fig. 1), where the same young woman with an umbrella can be recognized on the left. While these large compositions, teeming with picturesque details, evoke the contemporary and fashionable work of Jean Béraud, and later Édouard Cortès, Ulpiano Checa distinguishes himself through this type of smaller, more spirited sketch, which earned the praise of critic Maurice Guillemot:

“We prefer the simple studies he brings […], of direct, intense, and subtle vision, with picturesque coloring and charming skill.”