PEDRO VENANCIO GASSIS MINONDO (Pasajes de San Juan, 1850 - Burgos, 1896)."View from the port of

PEDRO VENANCIO GASSIS MINONDO (Pasajes de San Juan, 1850 - Burgos, 1896).
"View from the port of the old Casino of Donostia" 1888.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated and located in the lower right corner.
Period frame in perfect condition.
Measurements: 65 x 80 cm ; 110 x 96 cm (frame).
In this work the author offers us a vision from the interior of one of the mouths of the port, where he shows us a view of the old Casino of San Sebastian, where nowadays the town hall of the city is located, and we can appreciate all the great virtues and pictorial characteristics of this author, his lights and backlights, already almost impressionist, trace a Basque landscape, full of daring, sophisticated and romantic lights.
The son of a French military engineer and diplomat who set up a shipbuilding company in Pasajes de San Juan, he trained as a painter at the School of Drawing and Painting in Bayonne and later in Madrid. Through his father's influence, he was a military man by profession, fighting against the Carlists in the Third War and reaching the rank of artillery commander. He combined the army with landscape painting, and in his views of the ports of San Sebastián and Pasajes he depicted the different types of fishing and transport vessels. He spent long periods on leave in Venice and his paintings of images of the city were highly acclaimed, particularly notable for the great ease and immediacy of his technique, which recreated the reflections of light and buildings in the water with a language close to Impressionism. At the National Exhibition of 1892 he won a third medal for Venezia. He was a disciple of Martín Rico in his Roman period, which stands out for its pictorial quality and is of interest above all because of the difficulty of finding the artist's work as his artistic production was very short.