Arnosa, Jose Gallegos Y

José Gallegos was born in Spain on the third of May 1857 in the Convento de la Victoria in Jerez de la Frontera. He was the youngest of five sons. One of them became a university professor in Buenos Aires, another a coffee planter in Columbia, and another a naval officer who was killed in the war between Spain and the United States over the Philippines. Little is known of the fourth son. Jerez is a provincial town in Andalusia, and at the end of the last century the sherry community formed a small élite class of their own; the two leading families were the Domecqs, and the Gonzalez. Today they are still amongst the most important sherry producers of Spain. José Gallegos’ father, Don José worked in a sherry ‘bodega’ belonging to Don Gillermo Garvey, and it was he who assisted José in his application for enrollment at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. His father had initially pushed him toward architecture, where he was more likely to be able to make an independent living.Whilst at the Academy, José’s exceptional talent soon became apparent, and the director of the Academy wrote to his father requesting him to let his son stop his architectural studies, and change over to painting. He said that it would be a crime to limit the expression of such talent. José was allowed to change stream, and became a pupil of Madrazo. Nevertheless his architectural grounding was by no means wasted, as can be witnessed in the altarpiece that he executed in the Church of Santiago in Jerez . This massive work is 10 metres high, and is decorated with thirty-six bronze figures and was executed between 1900 and 1906 under the patronage of Don Gillermo