Sunday, March 1, 2020

CERRO PICO DEL BARROSO PAINTED BY ANTONIO SMITH


 

ANTONIO SMITH (1832-1877)
Cerro Pico del Barroso (4 ,858 m - 15, 938 ft)
Chile

In El rio Cachapoal (Rancagua o'Higgins region, Chile), 1870
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile



The mountains
Cerro Pico del Barroso (4 ,858 m - 15, 938 ft) is a mountain  is located in the province of Provincia de Cachapoal and the region of Región de O'Higgins, in the southern part of the Chile, 110 km southeast of the capital Santiago de Chile. The terrain around Cerro Pico del Barroso is mainly mountainous, but to the southeast it is hilly.  Around Cerro Pico del Barroso is very sparsely populated, with 5 inhabitants per square kilometer. There are no communities nearby.
The Rio Cachapoal, which means "green" in the Mapudungun language, is a river in Chile located in the region of the Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins. It flows into Lake Rapel. He gave his name to the Province of Cachapoal
It is a river of pluvio-nival regime, it has its source in the Andes, in the region of the Overo volcano, the Pico del Barroso and the Nevado de los Piuquenes.






The painter
Painter and caricaturist Chilean, Antonio Smith is considered the first satirico-politico artist of his country and one of the first truly contemporary painters, mainly cultivated the romantic landscape and exerted a considerable influence on later artists like Pedro Lira.
Son of an English father and Spanish mother, Antonio Smith studied at the National Institute of the Chilean capital, and then entered the Academy of fine arts, directed at that time by the Italian Alejandro Ciccarelli. During this time, the lessons taught in the Centre were subordinate to the rigid rules of pictorial academicism, inspired in turn by neoclassicism; This environment wasn't the young artist, who because of his disagreements with Ciccarelli, became the first student that would disappear from the Academy before the end of the studies. His eternal spirit of rebellion also led him to abandon the military career (1857), which had initiated in the cavalry squadron of grenadiers, to begin a life of dissident and 'Bohemian' artist, and frequent the most critical intellectual circles with the ruling classes of the country; then dedicated themselves to publishing cartoons in the pages of the literary mail that ridiculed to various public figures of the era, including, as not, the own Ciccarelli. The increasingly critical tone that was acquiring finally forced him to leave the country and go to Europe; This European stage, during which he/she worked in several Italian and French, painting workshops was crucial in defining its pictorial style and the definitive removal of academicism. In 1866 he/she returned to Chile, where he/she developed the rest of his career.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau