El Gobelas

Dario de Regoyos was introduced to drawing by his father, a distinguished architect and town planner who hoped that his son would also become an architect. Regoyos, however, favoured painting and enrolled at the Escuela de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid. Here he studied under the landscape painter Carlos de Haes. In 1881 he completed the first of many European journeys, travelling to France, the Netherlands and Belgian, which he later regarded as his second home.

Regoyos greatly admired Belgian art and became a founding member of del Circulo de Los XX whose fellow members included Théo van Rysselberghe, Jan Portaels, Alfred Stevens and his brother Agapit. James Abbott McNeil Whistler was also closely associated with the group when in 1884 he was invited to exhibit with them. Their work which often experimented with the pointillist technique was increasingly admired and is balanced by a sence of lyricism and poetic observation, all qualities that Regoyos was keen to employ.

In 1909 he returned to Spain and moved to Las Arenas in Bilbao, from there he explored, painting the locality. In 1910 he visited Plencia, Gorlitz and Barrika where the source of the river Gobelas is found, here he painted the present work, adopting an Impressionist style, sucessfully incorporating the pointillist technique, using dots of pure colour in the blues of the sky and the ochres and greens of the land and trees.