Elena Brockmann: The Training Trip of a Young Woman Painter. Unpublished Letters from Rome (1886-1887)

Abstract

This article studies for the first time the letters that the painter Elena Brockmann (1865-1946) sent to her mother from Rome, where she was receiving her artistic training between the years 1886 and 1887.
This correspondence, unpublished until now, is of extraordinary importance, since, for the time being, no other example is known of such an abundant corpus of letters —one hundred and three in total— from a female Spanish painter, much less from the 19th century. On one hand, it is an exceptional document as a material object resulting from the mobility of a woman artist, which gives account of her travel and her stay in Rome for one year. On the other hand, it has enormous value as a primary source that allows us to get to know the life and work of Brockmann, an artist who, despite the celebrity she had in life, especially as a genre and history painter, has fallen into oblivion. There are no monographic texts or any scientific research on her and a solo exhibition dedicated to her work is yet to be organized.
This research is done with a feminist perspective, essential to understand the conditions of a woman painter’s creation and the reception of her work. Primary sources have been consulted to write it, above all, along the artist’s letters, the Paradinas Brockmann Family Archive and Collection, the Museo del Prado Copyists’ Book, and the press of time.