Spanish painter and draughtsman. He attended the Colegio Militar in Santiago, Galicia, and then began literary studies in Madrid. After a period as an army officer, he embarked on a career as an artist during a stay in Cadiz, where he had been brought as a prisoner-of-war in 1823. He attended classes at the Academia de Cadiz and soon achieved some fame in the city. In 1830 he was commissioned to decorate the Tapia theatre in the Caribbean city of San Juan in Puerto Rico. In 1833 he returned to Spain and in Seville met the Scottish painter David Roberts, who introduced him to the British Romantic landscape style, in which he then continued to work for the rest of his life. In 1834 Pérez Villaamil settled in Madrid, taking an active part in the lively artistic world of the Romantic period, and achieving increasing success. In 1835 he was elected an honorary member of the Real Academia de San Fernando. He was also active as an illustrator. In 1837 Pérez Villaamil was among the founders of the Liceo Artístico y Literario Español, where he subsequently obtained high teaching and administrative posts. In 1840 Pérez Villaamil became Pintor Honorario de la Real Cámara, but during the Regency of General Espartero (1840-44) he remained abroad, partly occupied with the publication of his España artística y monumental, a book illustrated with lithographs mainly based on his own drawings. This work, one of the most beautiful lithographed travel books of Spanish Romanticism, with texts by Patricio de la Escosura, was published in Paris in 1842-43. Pérez Villaamil also travelled in Belgium and the Netherlands, in these countries (as also in France) carrying out commissions for the sovereigns and associating with important political and cultural figures. He received the Légion d'honneur from King Louis-Philippe and was elected a Knight of the Order of Leopold of Belgium. On the fall of Espartero in 1844 Pérez Villaamil returned to Madrid. In 1845 he was elected Lieutenant Director and Professor of Landscape at the Academia de San Fernando. From 1848 he also taught landscape painting at the Escuela Preparatoria de Ingenieros Civiles y Arquitectos. From this date until his death he made frequent sketching trips to the north of Spain and to Andalusia. He contributed with success to the exhibitions at the Academia and the Liceo, and in 1846 he showed his work at the Paris Salon, where it received high praise from Charles Baudelaire. Pérez Villaamil's work may be divided into a pre-Romantic and a Romantic period. His mature painting is full of fantasy: the colouring is warm, brilliant, with golden tones and a vaporous atmosphere enveloping objects and confusing distance. The oil paintings are of small and medium size, with strong drawing and a vigorous impasto technique. Pérez Villaamil was also a magnificent watercolourist, and a fluent draughtsman, notable for the elegance and strength of his sketches. The most important Spanish Romantic landscape artist, he initiated - through his work as well as his teaching - the systematic cultivation of landscape painting in Spain. //