Valenzuela Llanos, Alberto (1869–1925)

Chilean painter Alberto Valenzuela Llanos is considered one of the four ‘Great Chilean Masters’, along with Pedro Lira, Alfredo Valenzuela Puelma, and Juan Francisco González, who in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century renewed the pictorial experience, departing from the academic visual canons towards a modern approach. An eminent landscape painter, Valenzuela Llanos captured the tonal qualities and luminosity of the Chilean rural scenes and the Andean Mountains, and during his stays in Paris, the banks of the Seine, painting his favourite moments outdoors at dawn or in the twilight. With his luminous colouring and loose brushwork, which intensified during his studies of Impressionism in Paris in 1901–6, Valenzuela Llanos reacted against the academic canons, rendering academic painting more modern through his personal style. A key transitional figure, Valenzuela Llanos was awarded and honoured by the art academies numerous times, and was likewise regarded as a pioneer of modern painting.