Yglesia de San Antonio Abad

Yglesia de San Antonio Abad 

Louis Philippe Alphonse Bichebois and Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot after Genaro Pérez Villaamil, 1850 

Lithograph 

This view captures Bilbao’s church of San Antón Abad and the old bridge of the same name over the river Nervión. Two lithographers were involved in transforming Villaamil’s drawing into a print. The landscape and the buildings were drawn by Louis Bichebois, while the many figures that populate the scene were drawn by Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot. The latter appears to have specialised in this very demanding aspect of lithography. Villaamil’s Parisian publisher Hauser called upon him to draw all the figures in Girault de Prangey’s Souvenirs de Grenade et de l’Alhambra (1837) for which he received an acknowledgement on the title page, along with his colleague Louis Bichebois. 

The pleasing perspective from across the water surface and the motif of the picturesque market on the right reveal the lasting influence of David Roberts’s style on Villaamil. Villaamil met Roberts in Seville in 1833 and assimilated his manipulative approach to landscape painting. However, unlike Roberts, Villaamil concentrated on northern Spain, presenting novel images of the country to his audiences.  

Villaamil was Spain’s foremost landscape painter of the Romantic era. He was appointed honorary painter of Queen Isabela II in 1840, and obtained the first Chair of Landscape Painting at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid in 1845. A prolific artist, he catered to the tastes of a national and international clientele and high-ranking patrons, including Queen Isabela II, King Louis Phillippe I, King Leopold I of Belgium, George Villiers, the British ambassador to Madrid in the 1830s, and others. He was awarded the Spanish Order of Carlos III and the Belgian Order of Leopold, and made a member of the French Legion of Honour. The artist’s premature death on 5 June 1854 at the age of 47 was felt as a ‘calamity’ in the Spanish artworld. In London, the Illustrated London News acknowledged his death, describing him as ‘one of the most distinguished painters in Spain’.  

Title: Yglesia de San Antonio Abad en Bilbao | Église de Saint Antoine Abbé à Bilbao. 

Author/Artist: Louis Philippe Alphonse Bichebois (1801-1851) and Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot (1810-1866, lithographers) after Genaro Pérez Villaamil (1807-1854, artist). 

Technique and Material: Lithograph. 

Dimensions: 300 x 400 mm (image); 525 x 375 mm (page). 

Published: Plate 128 from Genaro Pérez Villaamil and Patricio de la Escosura, España artística y monumental. Paris: A Hauser, 1842-50. Volume 3. 

Date: 1850. 

Marks and Inscriptions: lower edge, left: ‘G.P.de Villa-Amil dibujó’ / ‘Paris – chez A Hauser Boulev des Italiens’; centre: title as above; right: ‘Bichebois lith Fig par Bayot’ / ‘Imp. Par Lemercier à Paris’. 

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.