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Lot Essay
In 1907, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera traveled to Europe to further refine his artistic training. After completing two years of study in the studio of the Spanish painter Eduardo Chicharro y Agüera, Rivera embarked upon a formative stylistic journey that took him from Madrid to Paris, Brussels, Bruges, Damme, Sluis, and London, before returning to Mexico City in 1910 to present the achievements of his European formation.
In each of the cities he visited, Rivera significantly broadened his artistic education through close study of Old Master works in museum collections, while simultaneously engaging with the latest developments in modern painting through galleries and exhibitions. In Paris, he studied the collections of the Louvre Museum, although equally captivated by the works of Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Monet, and above all, Paul Cézanne.
In Bruges, Rivera immersed himself in the melancholic dreamworld of Symbolism, capturing the nostalgia embedded within its canals and timeworn architecture, qualities masterfully expressed in his treatment of the landscape in Reflejos. The exceptional handling of the golden light that suffuses the composition reflects Rivera’s close study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, while his remarkable ability to render the stillness of water and the shifting reflections of architecture upon its surface led to the work being exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants of 1910 under its original title, Reflets. When later shown in Mexico during Rivera’s solo exhibition at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, the painting was met with considerable critical acclaim.
After decades away from public view, the work now emerges from obscurity in all its pictorial beauty, offering a renewed testament to the immeasurable talent of the master Diego Rivera.
Professor Luis-Martín Lozano, Art Historian
In each of the cities he visited, Rivera significantly broadened his artistic education through close study of Old Master works in museum collections, while simultaneously engaging with the latest developments in modern painting through galleries and exhibitions. In Paris, he studied the collections of the Louvre Museum, although equally captivated by the works of Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Monet, and above all, Paul Cézanne.
In Bruges, Rivera immersed himself in the melancholic dreamworld of Symbolism, capturing the nostalgia embedded within its canals and timeworn architecture, qualities masterfully expressed in his treatment of the landscape in Reflejos. The exceptional handling of the golden light that suffuses the composition reflects Rivera’s close study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, while his remarkable ability to render the stillness of water and the shifting reflections of architecture upon its surface led to the work being exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants of 1910 under its original title, Reflets. When later shown in Mexico during Rivera’s solo exhibition at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, the painting was met with considerable critical acclaim.
After decades away from public view, the work now emerges from obscurity in all its pictorial beauty, offering a renewed testament to the immeasurable talent of the master Diego Rivera.
Professor Luis-Martín Lozano, Art Historian