American Orientalist Painter Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858-1928)

Henry Siddons Mowbray was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where his father, John Henry Siddons, was a representative of a British bank. He died of a sunstroke soon after Harry's birth. His mother returned to England, then went to America to stay with a married sister. At the age of five, Henry lost his mother - she died in a kitchen accident: she burnt to death in a kerosene spill. The young boy then was adopted by his aunt's family, the Mowbrays.

 Henry Siddons Mowbray "Arcadia"

In 1869, the family moved to North Adams, MA, where, in 1877, Henry met a landscape painter Alfred C. Howland from Williamstown and became his student. By the end of 1878, he was already in Paris, where he stayed 7 years.
He worked at Leon Bonnat's studio, made a trip to Spain to study Velazquez. In 1880, his painting Young Bacchus was accepted at the Salon. Three years later, he was supporting himself as a genre painter. He met Jean-Leon Gerome, and often visited his atelier. Soon he painted small oriental pieces and a dealer took interest in him ordering more harem scenes.

 Henry Siddons Mowbray "Fleur de Luce"

In 1885, he spent winter in Algiers and by the end of the year he left Paris to return to America. He set up a studio in New York and another one in the Berkshires spending his summers there. He had an important patron, Thomas B.Clark, the New York collector. Mowbray also gave classes at the Art Students League until 1901.

 Henry Siddons Mowbray "Idle Hours". 1895

In 1886, he joined the Society of American Artists where he became friends with John Singer Sargent, Oliver Lafarge, Abbot Thayer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
In 1892, Mowbray got his first mural commission for the Athletic Club's summer house, he did the decorations in the C.P.Huntington mansion in New York City and worked as illustatrator for a few American magazines.
During WWI Mowbray worked on several Red Cross committees and had been an important presidential appointee on the National Commission of Fine Arts for many years. {American orientalists By Gerald M. Ackerman}

 Henry Siddons Mowbray  "A Game of Chess"

Spanish Painter Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945)

"The Great Basque" Ignacio Zuloaga comes from five generations of painters: his great-grandfather Don Bias Zuloaga was a contemporary of Goya, his grandfather Don Eusebio Zuloaga was an an accomplished armourer, his father Don Placido Zuloaga was a versalite handicraftsman.

Ignacio Zuloaga - "Antonia la gallega"

Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta was born in a small town of Eibar (the province of Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country of Spain), in the 16th century palacio, a family home for generations. As a young man he visited Madrid and after haunting the Prado for days, he begged his father to buy him paints and brushes.

Ignacio Zuloaga - "Picture of Lola with a Dress of White Flowers"

At 19, he traveled to Rome where he spent his time in the ateliers of the Via Margutta and nearby trattorias. Several months later, he left for Paris where he made his home in Montmartre like many aspiring young painters and lived there for 5 years. His friend Santiago Rusiñol wrote that Zuloaga shut himself up there `to live in silence, to work in darkness awaiting the light; he rented a studio with a view over the cemetry, he surrounded himself with solitude, and he lived all alone with painting, courting her all day and dreaming of her all night, and he took on a manservant who was mad of a most peculiar kind of madness...'(Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, The Life and Work of Ignacio Zuloaga).

Ignacio Zuloaga - Portrait of SEÑORA ATUCHA

The first time he exhibited his canvas in 1890 - among his fellow-exhibitors were Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, Maurice Denis, Jean-Édouard Vuillard, Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Signac.
Meating with no success Zuloaga leaves for London and in a while for Spain - he set up a studio in Sevilla.

Ignacio Zuloaga - Portrait of Doña Carmen Arconada, 1940

Influenced by Velázquez and Goya and working with infinite energy and enthusiasm, he painted mostly images of Basque and Andalusian traditions. He sent a few canvases to the New Salon of 1894, with no success again.
But already at the exhibition of 1896 in Barcelona his canvas "Friends" was was purchased for the Municipal and Provincial Museum of Barcelona. At the Salon of 1899 his painting "My Cousins and My Uncle Daniel" was purchased for the Musee du Luxembourg. (Zuloaga's cousin Cándida, the daughter of his uncle Daniel, was one of his favourite models, she appeared in 24 of his paintings.)

Ignacio Zuloaga - Víspera de la corrida, 1898

In 1909, Zuloaga returned to the French capital triumphant, The Spanish art historian Lafuente Ferrari wrote: "The success of previous years had placed the Eibar painter in the limelight in the ville lumière, making him fashionable in certain Parisian circles. The brilliance and seamlessness of his personality, backed by the graces and talent of his wife, made his lodgings a place sought after in Paris ... On the first day of the year 1909, Zuloaga gave a Spanish party for his friends, which was tantamount to saying the entire Paris of arts and letters at a time when Paris was truly and deservedly the arts capital of Europe ... There gathered around Zuloaga and his wife at the rue Caulaincourt apartment Rodin, Arsenio Alexandre, Maizeroy, Charles Cottet, the musician Laparra, Durrio, D'Annunzio's wife, Madame Catulle Mendès, La Breval, the pianist Rigalt, Madame Goulouveff, Albéniz and Congosto, the Spanish consul and good friend of Zuloaga since that period. This international parade of illustrious names contemplated the latest and most powerful works of the master, his collection of El Greco paintings, and savoured Spanish wines while being treated to a variegated programme of music and dance - Pablo Casals, with his 'cello; the famous Angel Barrios Llovet, a guitarist of renown; Fabián the gypsy and Juana La Macarrona put the wild note of flamenco dance into that meeting so in tune with the times of 1909."

Ignacio Zuloaga - Candida in Yellow (the artist's cousin was the subject of 24 of his paintings)

Zuloaga never attended an art school, he once said: "All I knew of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was the view one has of it from the windows of the Louvre."