El prestigio de Francia en la vida artística y social de Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1850-1900)

Abstract

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Canarian intellectuals regarded France as the reference nation for access to the highest culture. Settling in Paris for a time was the goal of writers and artists, as well as members of the local elite. The Parisian phase was not only crucial in their training, but the adoption of French ways of painting, designing architectural projects and composing prose, poetry or music was a transcendental objective. But as important as living the French experience was, it was more important to pass it on to compatriots from Tenerife. For this reason, the artists forged by the French experience, such as Cirilo Truilhé, Gumersindo Robayna or Manuel González Méndez, the writers Elías Zerolo, Patricio Estévanez or Juan Maffiotte, etc., left visual and written testimonies that reveal, above all, the success of French aesthetics. In this way, between 1850 and 1900 it was firmly established that the cultural and social fame of the Canarian bourgeois city, which was Santa Cruz de Tenerife, was inexorably linked to the prestige of France.

Keywords

• art
• painters
• nineteenth century
• Santa Cruz de Tenerife
• France