The Writer José de Espronceda

José de Espronceda spent the last two months of his life as a deputy in the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, elected for Almería in 1842. He was 34. In May of that year an infection of the throat killed him. The Prado dates this portrait between 1842 and 1846 and calls the head a posthumous interpretation, which means Esquivel was working from memory and from other likenesses rather than from the man. The poet Zorrilla, who had known him, later described his hair as curlier than it looks here. Esquivel painted the writers of Romantic Madrid all his working life, and four years after Espronceda's death he produced a large picture of a poetry reading in his own studio, some 40 faces in one room, every one of them recognisable. Espronceda is in that room as well, present only as a framed portrait on the wall, in this same pose, the head tilted a little. The canvas stayed in private hands for well over a century, and the Prado bought it in 2008.