Portrait of a Child with Flowers

Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench
Valencia, 1849-Godella, 1916
Date: c. 1900-1916
Dimensions: 53.50 x 42.50 cm
Materials: Oil on canvas
This is a nice portrait of a small boy on a wooden chair, looking at the viewer. The flowers in the foreground surround him, hiding most of his arms. We cannot tell if it is a boy or a girl, as he is dressed in a white robe, typical of the children’s clothing of yesteryear. However, the absence of some ornaments, such as earrings or accessories on the head, suggest that it may be more likely to be a boy. The work shows an unfinished appearance, due to the game of visual focus simulation, a resource widely used by its creator, the Valencian painter Ignacio Pinazo, throughout much of his artistic production, which some authors have called “the aesthetics of the unfinished”. The artist uses this technique to create the perspective that we observe in the portrait, leaving the foreground much more undefined than the central object of the work: the face of the portrayed.

After the study, the work has been incorporated into the archive of works by the painter Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench, in the Pinazo House Museum in Godella, with number 184-V