Antonio Garcia Mencia, (1852-1918). Born in Madrid in 1852, he studies at the San Fernando School of Art. He moves to Paris in 1872, where he gets in touch with the Spanish artistic colony, turning up regularly at the gatherings held by Raimundo de Madrazo and Leon Bonnat. He marries the painter Josefina Corchon Diaque, and lives for a season in Rome.
The production of his long stay in Paris includes young women, orientalism, and city life scenes (Le dejeuner sur l’herbe & l.a partie de canotage). After his debut at the Salon of 1873 with “Toast a la patrie”, he shows regularly at that annual event, and his works win prizes at exhibitions in London, Berlin and Bordeaux.
In I892 he returns to Madrid rewarded for his exceptional career, and moves to portrait painting and decoration, although he continues to produce genre paintings, which he shows at Barcelona’s Sala Bosch between 1893 and 1896. At the beginning of the century he moves back to the French capital, and shows “Witchcraft” there at the Salon of 1907. He dies in 1918, at the age of 66.
It is within his pursuit of genre painting as with the “New Hat” that Mencia can indulge his public’s predilection for the fanciful and familiar. His keyhole visions of the typical day to day domestic incidents that occur are only over-shadowed by his wonderful talent as a painter. The French critic, Grangedor in 1868, stated so eloquently, “It is these pictures, containing that combination of the timeless intimate element with a setting removed from most people’s normal experience, which are essentially an invention of popular nineteenth century painting.”
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