Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896)

Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896)
[Luis Falero]
Pupil of: Charles Goutzwiller, Gabriel Guerin, Michel Drolling and Picot


Luis Falero is one of the most distinguished and original artists of our day. Although he has his studio in Paris, he was born at Grenada in Spain, in 1851. He was intended for the Spanish navy, and was carefully educated to that end in Madrid, England, and Paris. In "The Belated Witch" he gives a fanciful episode of the old German legend that at certain periods the witches and warlocks hold a general holiday or Sabbath among the Brocken Mountains. Here one of the accursed sisterhood, who has neglected her opportunity to join the common parade to the rendezvous, sails out of a chimney on her journey alone, mounted on her broomstick, the traditional steed of the sworn servitors of Satan.

Quite another personification of the same deity is that given by the Spanish master Luis Falero, in "The Planet Venus." This is one of the pictures of what might be called his astronomical series, which so materially assisted in establishing his reputation as a great imaginative artist. In his hand the goddess becomes a gloriously voluptuous creation, dazzling in the splendor of her perpetual youth and beauty, which radiate a light like an electric flame.

"The Double Star," by Luis Falero, is another of his wonderful adaptations of a suggestion of astronomical science to the uses of art. The original picture was a sensation of the Salon of 1881.

[T]he painting by which Luis Falero effectively established his reputation, "The Vision of Faust." These pictures alone, and they were but part of a number more, cost many thousands of dollars. It has been estimated, by one of the heads of the house, that they alone have paid some ten times their cost in the amount of custom they have attracted, and relatively to the advance in market value of modern paintings of the first class, they could now be sold for double what was paid for them. The picture, in a technical sense, is cerainly Falero's masterpiece, as far as his productiveness has yet proceeded.

The spirit of the sea, as embodied by Luis Falero in "Marina," is a young and lovely woman, crowned with pearls, and wearing a robe of green and gold, the colors of the royal seaweeds, who wanders on the strand as in a realm of dreams.

The "Prayer to Isis" is one of the famous pictures of Luis Falero which grew out of his study of the antiquities of Egypt. Here a girl performs upon one of those ancient harps over a sounding skin like a drum-head, of which examples have been found by explorers. The instrument which the young child uses are sistrums. They were made of metal, and produced a rattling sound which kept time to the notes of music and the chant of the worshippers.

Original article taken from here