On the Seine

In 1862, having been awarded a prize by Madrid’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Rico traveled to Paris to develop his talent for landscape painting, eventually choosing to study with Charles-François Daubigny. This view, which he painted along the river Seine at Poissy in 1869, adopts one of Daubigny’s most characteristic picture types: an emphatically horizontal river view. Yet Rico’s smooth brushwork and precise realism reflect an awareness of contemporary photography that is entirely his own. In his autobiography, Rico wrote that "the delicate colors of the banks of the Seine and the Marne are not easily found elsewhere."