SALVADOR SÁNCHEZ-BARBUDO MORALES (Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, 1857 - Rome, 1917)."Fantasia au déssert, 1881.Oil on canvas.Signed and dated in the lower right area.Measurements: 58 x 104 cm; 71.5 x 117 cm (frame).Although the sources do not reveal that Salvador Sánchez Barbudo, never visited Africa, his works reflected themes of orientalist character as in this case. Orientalism was born in the 19th century as a consequence of the Romantic spirit of flight in time and space. The first Orientalists sought to reflect the lost, the unattainable, in a dramatic journey destined from the outset to fail. Like Flaubert in "Salambó", the painters produced meticulous portraits of Orient and imagined pasts, recreated down to the last millimetre but ultimately unknown and idealised.Interested in drawing and painting from an early age, Sánchez-Barbudo began his training in the workshop of the restorer Pedro Vera. At the age of nineteen he moved to Seville to study at the Provincial School of Fine Arts, thanks to the support of his protector and patron, the Marquis del Castillo, where he became a pupil of José Villegas. In 1878 he travelled to Madrid to further his training, remaining in the capital for four years. In 1881 he took part in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and was awarded a third-class medal for his work "Un salón de esgrima" ("A Fencing Salon"). The following year he went to Rome with his master. Due to his master's influence, and given that Villegas was a friend of Rosales, Fortuny, Zamacois and others, as well as a painter with a magnificent clientele (Vanderbilt, Stuard, Krupp...), Sánchez-Barbudo was initiated into the fashionable genre, costumbrista historicism (known as casacón subject matter). Fascinated by the artistic atmosphere of the Italian capital, Sánchez-Barbudo decided to settle in the city and, from then on, to make the city the protagonist of his painting. In addition to the themes of casacons, he also produced small-format paintings of high society scenes and landscapes, and was particularly noted for his portraits. He occasionally sent works to the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts in Madrid. In 1884 he sent to Spain the monumental canvas entitled "Hamlet. Last Scene", with which he won a second medal at the National Exhibition of the same year. He exported his works especially to England, where his historicist genre paintings were extraordinarily well received, and he himself enjoyed a reputation as an exquisite painter. Sánchez-Barbudo showed in his works a perfect mastery of the basics of the genre: a skilfulbination of bourgeois naturalism and loosely executed preciosity. His brushstrokes are rapid and precise, and he gives the chromaticism a totally personal vibrancy and variety. He worked with small touches, both in the figures and in the scenes, paying special attention to the atmosphere. He was also an excellent watercolourist and engraver. In 1997 an anthological exhibition was dedica