DANIEL HERNANDEZ (Salcabamba Peru, 1856 - Lima, 1932)"Miss with guitar and mantilla".Oil on panel.Signed in the upper left corner.Measurements: 35 x 17 cm; 36,5 x 28 cm (frame).Peruvian painter who was born in the region of Huancavelica in Salcabamba on August 1, 1856. Son of the Spanish Leocadio Hernández and the Peruvian Basilia Morillo, his parents moved to Lima when he was 4 years old, Hernández was precocious in his artistic education, beginning at the age of 14 in the workshop of Leonardo Barbieri. The Italian was a great promoter of the arts in Lima, organising the first "Exposición de Pintura Nacional" (National Painting Exhibition) with a large group show of Peruvian art in 1861. After the failure of the national exhibitions, Barbieri returned to his homeland and it was then that our painter took up the post of teacher at the aforementioned school. Around 1872 he painted The Death of Socrates - currently housed in the Central Reserve Bank of Peru - which earned him a scholar to Europe. He arrived in Paris in 1873 where, after some time, hispatriot Ignacio Merino advised him to move to Rome. In the Eternal City he remained for more than eleven years working and learning with Spanish masters such as Mariano Fortuny and Lorenzo Vallés, and in 1883 he returned to Paris, where he was elected president of the Society of Spanish Painters living in the city of Luz. There he met Spanish artists, including Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz and José Villegas y Cordero, both of whom were also living in the French capital at the time. He also managed to be a member of the Society of French Artists, which enabled him to exhibit at the Annual Artists' Salon for seven years. In Spain, it is worth mentioning his participation in the Exhibitions held in Barcelona between 1891 and 1894, being awarded prizes in both, as well as in the International Exhibition of Madrid in 1892, where he presented four works, winning the third Medal for his Portrait of Miss R.C. In any case, Daniel Hernández remained in Paris - the international capital of art - for more than twenty years, establishing himself as a painter of genre, portraits and female nudes. It is worth mentioning his participation in the 1899 Salon, where he was awarded the second medal for his painting La Perezosa. The following year, at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, he was awarded the Gold Medal for his painting Amor Cruel (Cruel Love). In 1912 he travelled to Argentina and Uruguay to exhibit his work, returned to Rome for an exhibition and then returned to Paris, where he lived until 1918. In 1918 his younger brother became one of the most valued preachers of the Dominican Order in Peru, and at the same time the President of the country, D. José Pardo, called him to Peru to exhibit his work. Daniel Hernández is considered an academicist, perhaps because of his important role as a worldly portraitist of the bourgeoisie, maintaining a careful formal and chromatic har