Nicolás Megía was born in 1845 in an Extremenean town Fuente de Cantos, in a peasant family. Soon he went to Madrid to study medicine and at the same time took painting classes with from Valdivieso, surely not informing his family about that. It is known for certain that he dropped his medical studies between 1866 and 1867 to dedicate all his time to painting in Madrid Higher School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, winning there two gold medals, probably for the skills which he learned from his new maestro Casado del Alisal. Between 1873 and 1875 he travelled to Rome and in 1878 to Paris, where instead of taking up the new impressionist trends he chose the official path of Meissonier and his minions. When he returned to Madrid he was appointed to become the painting teacher of infantas, sisters of the king Alfonso XIII. But he didn’t proceed to the work itself because of a funny reason: he failed to come to the classes dressed according to the etiquette. Finally in 1902 he received a long-term appointment to teach sketching in the Higher School of Arts and Crafts, and died fifteen years later, in 1917, in Madrid. |
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Lady with a Veil |
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