The Guadarrama from the Plantío de los Infantes by Aureliano de Beruete

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1910. Oil on canvas, 67 x 101 cm.

Madrid's massive mountain range, the Sierra Madrileña, is depicted by Beruete from the outskirts of Madrid. This natural element was the painter's favorite for his mountain landscapes. The work shows how this natural space was reclaimed as an axis for the regenerationalist politics that filled public life at the turn of the ninteenth to twentieth centuries. Understood as "the backbone of Spain", this mountain range symbolically incarnated the values defended by the Generation of '98. The intellectual value of this painting is accompanied by Beruete's considerable pictorial quality. An essential characteristic is the use of a horizon that closes the composition in a manner similar to how other European lanscape painters were working at that time. The use of rapid brushstrokes and a limited palette are technical values that link this work to Velasquez, who use the same mountain range as the background for some of his portraits.