It is fitting to allude here to artists of different types and talents in some of the cities of Spain, and others living abroad, who laboured during the last years of the nineteenth century--the Madrazos, Raimundo and Ricardo, sons of Don Federico de Madrazo, who studied under the direction of Fortuny; Plasencia, Domínguez and Ferrán, who distinguished themselves in work of a decorative character in the Church of Saint Francisca the Great in Madrid; Pradilla and Villegas, who have obtained the greatest triumphs during a long career; the brothers Mélida, Enrique and Arturo, the first working in Paris for many years, and the second a famous decorative artist; Egusquiza, painter and engraver; Moreno Carbonero, who, more a historical and portrait painter, found a popularity for his pictures inspired by episodes in literature, especially those of Quixote, in which he has coincided with Jiménez Aranda. We may also mention a group of artists, all of Valencia, a city which in times past, as in the present, enjoyed notable artistic prosperity: Sala, Muñoz Degrain, Pinazo Camarlench, José Benlliure and many others. Nearly all of them were represented at the Exhibition at Burlington House in the Salon set apart for the painters of this epoch. * * * * * In the second half of the nineteenth century the study of nature in the form of landscape arose as a creed, the artist coming face to face with the scene which he desired to transfer to his canvas. It has been said “what the landscape is, so is he who praises it.” Until then the landscape had been nothing but a background for a composition or figure, and those who called themselves landscape painters, when they undertook to paint a scene used it as a peg on which to hang poetical ideas, embellishing it, but never treating it as a true rendering of nature. Now the artist came to the country, felt the influence of nature, and faithfully copied it. The object of his work was to be as natural as possible, without embellishing or poetizing his subject, but to portray it, as one might say. This was a new idea to the painters of the time.