ANTONIO REYNA

Antonio Reyna

 Native of Coin in Andalusia where he was born in 1859, Antonio Maria De Reyna Manescau was one of the greatest Spanish artists of the nineteenth century and one of the most original of his time also in Italy.

With a real talent for drawing, when young he attended the school of Fine Arts in Malaga, where he began his artistic training.

He rapidly became a celebrity in both his own region and throughout Spain and the County Council paid him a small revenue in order that he could extend his studies and his knowledge.
Thanks to this Reyna moved to Italy, devoting himself to the study of the old masters, and coming into contact with the pictorial ferment of the ‘800 Italian.
In love with Venice, he devoted most of his work to the lagoon city .

This artist is considered by many the most significant representative of  Venetian  painting …

… .between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
With a very personal technique, which gives his work a vibrant and chromatically intense light

…
…. he painted Venetian palaces and  architecture in great detail.

He exhibited at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Paris in 1887 and also participated in 1901 and 1911 at the Great Exhibition of Rome. In 1901 he presented in this exhibition one of his best known works, the “Rancho” also called “Cortijo Ricardo” …

…. now it is preserved in the museum of his hometown.
Antonio Reyna, along with Senet, continued the tradition begun by Martin Rico y Ortega, painters of light and colour that set on the canvas their impressions through animated pictorial images from the canals, gondolas, Venetian palaces and squares.

Contrary to many other artists, Antonio Reyna enjoyed a reasonable level of success during his life  and died in Rome in 1937.