Spanish School (c. 1800) - Poor Boy

Oil on canvas. Harnessed. This strikingly naturalistic scene, probably painted in Seville at the beginning of the 19th century, echoes, with poignant but belated force, the harsh material reality of a Spain that, despite the passing centuries, continued to struggle against poverty and destitution among its humblest classes. The work inherits and renews the spirit of the picaresque novel, this literary and pictorial perspective that elevates survival to the level of art, finding in the dignity of the destitute a subject for profound aesthetic reflection. It is impossible not to perceive in this face the influence of Murillo's famous young men, although here stripped of the ethereal sweetness of the Baroque era, they are depicted in a harsher, more direct light, demonstrating that the Sevillian picaresque novel was not just a genre of the past, but a persistent human condition, intimately linked to the fabric of Spanish society. - Dimensions of the image without frame: 41 x 56 cm / 57 x 72 cm with a custom frame.