
Agustín Esteve y Marqués (May 12, 1753 – 1830) was a Spanish painter, mainly active in the
Royal household in Madrid.
Biography
Agustín Esteve was a portraitist to the Spanish Crown, who was influenced by
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...
, including numerous copies of portraits by the great master. Among his masterworks is the portrait of the Countess of San Andrés de Parma. Condesa de Lerena, Mª Josefa Piscatori Díaz de Lavandero (ca.1800).
Esteve was born in
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
, in the province of the same name, on the 12 May 1753, possibly the son of a Valencian sculptor also named Agustín Esteve. He grew up in Valencia and studied at the
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in that city. In 1772 he won a first prize in the third class in the Painting department for a drawing at Madrid's
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...
. In 1778, Esteve failed to win the first prize at the Academia de San Fernando for painting.
Like Goya, Esteve became established when the
neoclassicism of
Anton Raphael Mengs
Anton Raphael Mengs (22 March 1728 – 29 June 1779) was a German painter, active in Dresden, Rome, and Madrid, who while painting in the Rococo period of the mid-18th century became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting, which replac ...
was still dominant in Madrid. However, in the late 18th century, Esteve came under Goya's influence, as well.
On June 14, 1800, the King named Esteve Painter to the Court. He was paid a salary of 6,000 reals compared to the 15,000 that most other painters received, or the 65,000 of Francisco Goya.
References
* ''Agustín Esteve, y Goya'' by Martín S. Soria, 1957.
* "Agustín Esteve, y Goya" by Martín S. Soria, in ''The Art Bulletin'', Vol. 25, No. 3, (Sep., 1943), pp. 239–266.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esteve, Agustin
1753 births
1830 deaths
Artists from Valencia
18th-century Spanish painters
18th-century Spanish male artists
Spanish male painters
19th-century Spanish painters
Painters from the Valencian Community
19th-century Spanish male artists