Los dibujos wagnerianos de Egusquiza existentes en la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid

Abstract

Around 1876, Rogelio de Egusquiza (1845-1915) -a genre and portrait painter- was led by his love for music and literature to get in touch with Wagnerism and became friend of the German composer Richard Wagner. From that moment on, his life and work were transformed, and he starts his last and most personal pictorical stage, which is dominated by Wagnerian iconography. His work -strange to the dominant taste in Spain- can only be understood in the context of his close linkage to the French world and specially the Parisian capital where he lived most of his life. The drawings shown in this article belong to this last stage. They are a series of studies for the etchings and the third and last group of Wagnerian oil-paintings, which he gave to the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid.