Peasant couple with geese, oil on panel, 40,5 cm x 28 cm, signed, partly craquelure, partly retouched, partly small paint chips.
Daniel Hernandez Morillo was born in Peru in 1856, but he spent many years of his life in Paris. His studies in Paris and Rome led him to become president of the ''Sociedad de Pintores Espanoles'', to be accepted into the ''Societe des Artistes Francais'' and to participate regularly in the Salon. As the first leading director of the ''Escuela Nacionale de Bellas Artes'' in Lima, he was able to bring about its opening in 1919 and fulfilled this position until the end of his life. Initially he worked in watercolours, but later Morillo painted some genre paintings and portraits in oils. Among these, the work of the girl lying on her stomach, ''Idle Woman'', exhibited in the Museo de Arte de Lima, was considered rococo, academic on the one hand and offensive on the other. More tranquil and above all more approachable were the depictions of peasant women, such as the ''Girl with the Firewood'', or the present peasant couple with geese. In this work, Morillo's training in fine brushstrokes can be seen as well as the capture of a lovely conversation of the peasant couple shooing the geese at the end of the day.
