Francisco Miralles y Galup – The perfect red rose

Francisco Miralles y Galup was a painter  of genre, townscape and seascape. He first studied in Barcelona with Ramon Marti y Alsina before arriving in Paris in 1866. He settled there until 1893 and at this time he was very close to the Spanish artists Ignacio Zuloaga, Santiago Rusinol and Enrique Granados. Miralles dealt with Goupil, the Parisian art dealer and also with Enrique Gomez, who was the painter Simon Gomez’s brother. Francisco Miralles y Gallup took part in many exhibitions, including Valencia in 1855 and the National  Exhibition of Fine Art in Barcelona in 1866. He was awarded a medal in Dieppe in 1875, another in  Angoulême in 1877 and a gold medal  in Montpellier in 1885. He also exhibited at  the Paris Salon from 1875 to 1896.  The Museum of Brest owns La Place de Clichy,  painted in 1882. Miralles y Gallup painted many genre paintings during the Second Empire: gradually, the life of bourgeois women became his main  theme. As a painter of modern elegant life, his meticulous touch was very much in vogue during his lifetime.  Miralles y Gallup was one of the most famous of the Catalan painter in Paris during the late nineteenth century.