Alonso Perez (1881 - 1914)

ALONSO PEREZ (1881 - 1914)
Lady and Napoleon Soldier in the Street
Oil on canvas signed and dated 1906 low right
Dedication : Au sympathique maître et ami (effacé) en souvenir de son délicieux poème "Le premier péché".
Old frame re-gilded with gold leaves
Dim canvas : 61 X 41 cm
Dim frame : 81 X 61 cm

ALONSO-PEREZ (1881 - 1914)
Alonso-Pérez was born into a family of artists in 1881 in Saragossa
Alonso-Pérez is known to have been living in Paris in 1901, although it is entirely possible that he had arrived much earlier.  He may have begun exhibiting his work as a young teenager, so it is not surprising to find him participating in the Paris Salon in 1901 at age twenty.  The record of the Société des artistes françaises exposition annuelle des beaux-arts provides documentation that Alonso Pérez’s painting Bonne Farce was included in the exhibition. Artistically, Alonso-Pérez followed in his father’s footsteps by painting light-hearted genre scenes that were loosely based on eighteenth-century models.  Many of these depict flirtatious encounters, such as The Billiard Lesson, which are reminiscent of the rococo themes of François Boucher, or alternately, the daily activities such as Going to the Market, which echo the focus on bourgeois life espoused by painters like Jean-Baptiste Greuze in the 1770s.  However, Pérez also painted contemporary life in Paris, often using a blend of late nineteenth century settings and fashionable costumes from an earlier period.  Much of the men’s clothing, in particular, reflects eighteenth-century fashion, including the powdered wigs and tricorn hats, while the women’s clothing is often less definable as being from a particular time period. Similarly, Pérez was influenced by Impressionist approaches to color and light.  His work often seems to be inspired by Pierre-August Renoir, whether in his images of beautiful women seated in a variety of interior settings, or in his lively portrayals of cheerful gatherings at riverside cafes.  Even when the figures are clad in old-fashioned costumes, the surrounding environments are often handled with an emphasis on the changing play of light on surfaces and textures.  

Selected Museums
Musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques
Musée du Vieux-Château, Laval, France

Bibliography :
-    Pintors espanyols a Paris, 1880-1910, ex. cat., Fundació Caixa , (Barcelona: Fundació Caixa, 1999), 176-178.
-    Explication des ourvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, (Paris: Imprimerie Paul Dupont, 1901).
Friedrich von Boettcher, Malerwerke des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, (Leipzig: H. Schmidt & C. Günther, Pantheon-Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1901) 235.
-    Dictionary of artist E.Benezit Book X / 741